OF SONGS

if only her visage had survived the ages.   she wonders if there would be song sung , artwork praised , and histories analyzed of the legendary dragyn queen of persia.  

but she’d been defeated and it’s the winners who write history.  her image , laws , monuments , and all she’d done in her two centuries of being queen ; they’d all been torn down and replaced.  it wasn’t an ageless woman with a hellish face that ruled persia , but kind , mortal men who did what they could for their empire.  she hissed at the age-old rage building up within her.  

if memory of her had survived , would the songs still be sung ?   would the world be any different if humans today knew that one of the greatest civilizations had been run by a monsterous woman ?    

❝     i seek to learn of the world as well.      ❞       there were gaps missing.  millennia missing.  some things made sense , but most didn’t.   the only time she could forget such was when she was away from people , covered in scales and headed towards the sun.   but sometimes the people could be interesting.    ❝    what is your name ?    ❞

     “do you?”  gatsby clings to that -- the chance as much as the survival it could offer.  how many syrens could claim to meet a dragyn; how many could say such without wounds or death to follow or silence them?  such creatures have been known with infamy as being monsters who slaughter without thought.  but she speaks with an emptiness to match gatsby’s curiosity.  

a gift, then.  he’s not about to step away from such a thing.  

tilting his head up higher, gatsby dips into a delicate bow.  lingering for only a moment before he rises to face her once more.  “gatsby.  of the arkic kingdom, far beneath the coldest waters this world knows.  you haven’t heard of them, i’m sure.  it’s how our queen prefers us.”  

he does not bother to hide the bitterness within those words.  instead uses such energy to will himself closer to her, long, slow steps that cover some feet before drawing still.  is it fear that stops him, or caution?  where do the two cease being one and the same -- or better yet, where do they collide?  she could devour him.

it’s little doubt that she will.

* ╱ 𝕤𝕖𝕝𝕖𝕟𝕖 𝕟𝕚𝕘𝕙𝕥

●︎ when: june 15th, 2019 ●︎ where: town center during pride fest, dell rapids ●︎ with: @parliansyren  ●︎ song: fast slow disco by st. vincent

“thank you, thank you,” she’s not shy in matching his grin for one of her own, cheeks flushing from both the heat and drinks she’s had. she honestly hadn’t mean to, but ever the klutz when under the influence, selene thinks stopping to talk to this stranger would help. she sips on water from a straw, making her way through the spectacle to find elyse after getting her order of sodas wrong for a beer and well, got distracted after waving the waiter over again. 

she would have to apologize but the last thing she wants is for her sister to see her this sloppy. this fellow, on the other hand, he’d have to endure the potential of selene rambling. “oh no, no, a gift by the vendors here. it’s not my taste, per say, but i’m surprisingly digging the way it goes with my outfit,” she joked. admittedly, she stood out - not because of flashy clothes but due to her minimal effort in picking out her clothes. plain, ripped jeans coupled with a black top and shoes, an improvement from her usual all black attire.

“i’d ask you the same but your energy’s practically contagious,” she teases, noting the vivid colors radiating from the other. wytches have this nifty awareness, separating others by colors or auras transmitted to them and she’s spellbind by his. 

she’s sweet immediately, a flush beneath her skin that speaks of alcohol as much as the celebration and the wide, scalding sun so close above them.  gatsby’s mouth twitches upwards as he curves a hand around her forearm to help steady her, the touch brief and fleeting.  just enough for her to gather herself without the pressure of bodies pushing by to send her spiraling to the asphalt.  

     “it looks lovely, everything about you does.”  gatsby says honestly.  “they’re being awfully kind with guests -- plenty of free merchandise despite the urge to make money.  coaxes more customers i guess.”  there’s laughter in his voice as he says it.  a stark contrast to her, louder laughter and quieter clothing, a contrast that gatsby finds more and more enjoyable the longer they stand side by side.  

     “is it?  that’s a compliment i haven’t heard before, but thank you.”  he dips his head towards her, smiling ever so faintly at the kindness here.  even without the song that feeding never ends it seems, a hunger that syrens are built to feed.  

“The devil really is in the detail.” Vik had grown strangely fond of toying with human phraseology. They said the strangest things with no real context, just phrases they would repeat to each other until boredom struck. The detailing in the usage of odd over handsome mattered very little to the surface-bound syren. Being an oddity was a fabulous compliment that she’d received for many different mouths all thinking they had been the origin. 

“Being a delicacy leaves no space to be delicate.” She is a fine dish that not all will experience but those who do will find it difficult to find another that satiates the palette in the same way. Gatsby seems intent on not letting the breeze past between them so in their embrace they exchange breaths. The kisses burned her lips and the intensity kept her close, pushing into his frame, hoping for more of him.  

The ocean wasn’t enough for you. 

Vik wanted to rip his tongue from his mouth so that he would never hold another tune for others to enjoy, forever maimed by the disrespect he’d shown to her loss. His wordsmithing would be garbled attempts at speech, leaving no one to understand him. A fitting punishment for misunderstanding how volatile talk of the sea made her. Gatsby surely knew better than to think that his charm and his hands could offset the syren blood that still managed its way through her veins. It coursed through her, each passing day aching with loneliness that company would never fill. “The ocean was enough for me.” 

Her words were offered from a clenched jaw, if unhinged she would have surely unleashed irreparable wrath and ruined his pretty little party. Gatsby was good to her but he dabbled deeply in bold moments, some of which Vik could not shrug off. Without the comfort of her home and her powers and her syrenhood there were so many new obstacles to face. Every day the tide seemed to roll further and further away, the blue of her eye turning despairingly grey. She decided it best not to say more on the matter; warning shot fired.  

At a different, in a different place Vik would not have hesitated in prizing his head from his strong neck. She would have found a shoreline somewhere to place his skull decoratively on a pike for gulls to peck at before diving back to her sea. Life on land held only a few good friends, cutting them down too quickly would have never left her able to survive. Gatsby was an honest ally, a home away from home, even if he dared his life with some of his witless lines. 

“They never know what to do with our beauty.” Vik thought that to be true, coming into contact with a distinct clinginess that the human experience seemed to endure. They wanted to keep tabs and keep close to the things they enjoyed. Being used to expansiveness Vik was always opposed to the needs of mortals. She’d date, sleep with and share the company of those who pleased her and the moment they didn’t they no longer existed in her realm. Many silly humans were heartbroken her cutthroat ways but she thought it foolish of them to think they offered her anything substantial to allow them permanence.  

Vik leaned herself back in his embrace to catch his eye for what could have been described as a moment longer than expected. “It is one of the overlooked joys.”

Let this be known: the ocean holds nothing for Gatsby.  What joys come from swimming within the depths he can keep at bay and satisfy with the lakes and rivers surrounding these towns, every town.  It’s nothing to him, those waves, the lovely taste of salt corrupted in his mind by the world that resides beneath and has learned to be so bitter, so cruel and sharp to those around them.  From there, the difficulty.  He finds an admiration in the syrens who leave the ocean behind.  A strength to them that he cannot imagine having, a desire that Gatsby will never be able to fulfill so long as there is cowardice in his heart; a need to be by Indigo’s side.

Thus, a jealousy that he is happy to let linger.  A kiss for Vik no matter her bitter anger, for he is endlessly envious of the freedom that she has.  Let them trade it if they must, if he could stay with his sister despite abandoning the water. Her sharpness is fair if only for honesty, a thing that Gatsby would never not offer her.  No bigger cruelty in lying to someone about the truth that you see, oh yes, the water does not deserve who Vik is soul deep and further.  The kingdoms could not contain her.   She is alive, and breathing, and powerful, beyond what a queen or princess could dare to cradle in their hands.  

What makes Gatsby capable?  He doesn’t know.  One day Vik may slice him apart and leave him bleeding, but who knows.  Until then Gatsby has been given the gift, the right to play this game with her.  So he does not apologize.  Takes her rage with fingers up, down her sides.  Back to that waist so well suited for his hands.  

    “I appreciate their mortality.”  Gatsby says to her, his chin leaning on her shoulder for a moment.  “They are so terribly honest because of their limited time, even the deceitful ones are true in the lies that they make.  I’ve never known a species to be so brutally honest to the point of being endearing.”  He feels like he looks at humans the same way they look at their own young children, coo and comment on their naive ways.  Sometimes it’s a solid weight on his tongue that he cannot spill out no matter the hunger: you are children too, this world is too old for you.  

He pulls back to kiss Vik’s shoulder.  Were he one to wear colors on his lips, he’d leave a stain there.  One small mark that isn’t beneath the skin, maybe even bolder than a bruise.  The thought makes Gatsby laugh softly as he moves his hand to take her own and squeezes it, gentle and soft.  “Let me take you for a drink.”  He says as an apology, a kindness, “and you can tell me about your dragyn.”

that’s something ironic to come from her.  an answer for a ten thousand year old debate from the mouth of a perfect creature.  if other artists met with her and followed her creative process he thinks their skin would crawl, their teeth would gnash, they would combust with a singular rage at how everything she crafts is so carefully constructed that it is perfect, as much as art can be, and indigo always manages to maintain an ambiguous sense of unawareness when faced with this fact.  not even gatsby is free of the bafflement she awakes in others.  he has labored over his songs for hundreds of years and seen only soft excellence on his pages in rare, welcome visits.  perfection, never.  

if his works are flowers dancing between wilting and flourishing for a final show, indigo’s are massive blossoms with silken petals of the richest shades.  it should make him jealous, he thinks.  fill him with despair, at least more than the fleeting dark flavor that can fill his mouth when his pages are empty and hers overflow.  but he knows that as a rare thing.  something more worth shame than anything else he feels towards her, anything else she awakens.  

mostly he knows pride.  the same admiration that gatsby feels for songbirds that always sing the right notes and great big felines who roar without a crack in their throat.  they are great.  they are transformative.  they are lesser to indigo, for it is in their nature, their only purpose for existence, a known and true thing, but who could say that for a syren?  what ocean dweller is meant and made to walk the earth and write of their experiences and those of others, the history of species they are not?  

yet here she is.  phantasmal and resplendent, her mouth a bright searing flame that sometimes seems as though it is dripping the ink she had written with.  everything and nothing that gatsby could ever be, would ever hope for, and would fear so singularly in the face of all other things.  the song that has been sung by him -- always sung, never an empty moment from his throat if only filled with breath -- comes to a sluggish halt.  gatsby’s tongue drags over his teeth, and he laughs.  

stages don’t belong to gatsby -- he feels like an interloper stepping into a space that writhes beneath his presence, draws the eyes of crowds so cold and cutting that sweat glistens on the back of his neck.  his teeth catch and grind together as his fingers shake, and shake, and gods, were they not necessary when beneath the great waters and inside towering kingdoms, gatsby would never cross into that space.  stages are made for other creatures.  more confident things, full of presence and brightness that they cannot keep inside of themselves, bursting from the seams to tell their stories and great truths to the world.  indigo is one of them, he thinks, for she took what they wrote and learned for themselves and made it into a performance known for it’s magnificence.  

but you are there, some would argue, those of land instead of water.  and it is your stage too.

no, gatsby would assure them, it’s no more mine than a stage belongs to back up singers or those who adjust the lights.  he is a prop, a side performance, an assistant in building the conceptually energy that she wants for her poetry and offering her throat interludes by the delicacy of his songs.  let the crowds and the gods and the ocean itself stare at indigo with all attention that she deserves, soaks up and swallows until she is gorged upon it.  he doesn’t want it for himself.  or -- he doesn’t deserve it, and knows that, and sees it as something he doesn’t want for the sickness that comes when he feels those eyes.  that love.  all that wretchedly thick adoration.

and yet he is a warped hypocrite.  wearing these lies like halos around his skull, jewels on his fingers.  distasteful of every stage, and yet, the restaurant turned bar turned performance art draws gatsby out of his seat and through the hazy liquor slick air after the conversation lulls.  coercing indigo to follow some feet behind, he slips his way towards the small stage against an old wooden paneled wall.  stained carpet covers the raised floor.  it’s a well made disaster of a place that will leave the reside of its presence across their skin, imprinted into their eyes for hours after their inevitable leaving.  for now it just lays heavy across them, a kiss that you cannot escape.  more intimate and kind than the dismissal of an employee, the cold feeling of a well worn machine behind gatsby’s slender hands.

the music starts and indigo balks.  her wide eyes saying too much, displaying a chunk of her soul that gatsby cannot help but absorb and keep as his own.  the corners of his mouth pull up.  his fingers a lock around her wrist that coaxes her higher, until her shoes scrape the carpet and she circles around him.  hips checking one another.  gatsby takes one of the microphones, old and rusting into his hands.  memorizing the texture, the weight, the way that it catches even the smallest breath and turns it into a ghostly sound.  besides him, indigo echoes his motions.  few glance up.  give them attention for only a moment or two before returning to their drinks and lonely company.  that sound becomes background, and the song --

why the song is the stage, is the microphones, is the way they look at one another instead of the screen.  is the brief contact of fingertips and the swaying of muscles loosened by centuries within deep ocean waters.  it’s a photograph that cannot stop moving, a memory captured in a jar beating its wings to break free.  the song is them, and theirs, and that alone.  two powerful voices that tear into one another as much as they blend, twisting and transforming from two two two, now one one one from two bodies and two throats, but gods, aren’t they the same as well?  it’s a song, and a stage, and a moment that gatsby wishes every song, every stage could be.  it’s a shift in the bodies around them instinctual as consciousness was lost long ago to the performance not feet away.  

more, it’s indigo’s eyes, and the way her mouth twists upwards, and how she circles around him.  with him.  more animal than person, than syren, something altogether new.  

it’s the song breaking in an end and gatsby’s mouth on her cheek, tasting the shake in her skin as she laughs.  microphones hanging dangerously from their cords as scattered applause sounds like a rampaging roar when matched with his heartbeat, and her fingers on his arms, guiding the press of forehead to forehead where they linger in place.  from around his shoulder, indigo motions to the employee young and weary sitting at their small mechanical box.  

“Handsome constant of yours.” She corrected with a teasing smirk. They did have their moments of silliness through all their chemistry. Vik was so feline in her way and want to toy with him, full clawed and batting at him so inquisitively. Tender in her want to know him. Their familiarity was born out of an undeniable mutual interest from the moment they’d met. The flirtation had been harmless and his soft songbird ways had called her back.  

Though her blood runs cold, he has always run colder. To be warming to anyone for her is fascinating. Cradling him in the depths of cool nights after intense moments, sharing panted nothings mouth to mouth. There is a romantic element to the duality, one taller, one warmer, one softer, the mix and appreciation of difference and finding sameness in satisfaction. Whatever they’d found in the bosom of the other was mutual.  

“Tearing through the world?” Her features were questioning though they were so close that it would have been hard for him to tell. “I thought she was rather delicate.” Vik couldn’t help herself, underselling how otherworldly and tempting Zahra’s power had been in the moment she’d seen her. Stories had to be well-told, weighted and paced. Slow and building all the time.  “I should be so lucky to be swallowed whole by something so beautiful.” From the water to land and into a belly of fire; poetic.  

“If she does decide to keep me as a trinket, I’ll make sure to write.” Love letters scrawled on siphoned dragyn scales. 

“It makes for a better tale than a fragile human.” There was a thrill to telling Gatsby stories of her exploits. Watching his eyes fill with joyous pleasure as she offered each and every detail she could recall. Foreplay never seemed so visceral. His teeth pulling her lip encouraging her whole body closer though there was no more space to eliminate. Quick kisses would do as something of an aperitif but if her appetite got the better of her and she couldn’t quite wait she’d surely make that known. “And you? Who’s kept you entertained?” Her fingers found the back of his neck and splayed at its nape, pulling him back for her own small peck. 

     “where’s the difference?”  gatsby returns, playful needle for needle.  it’s a fascination that the time between them doesn’t matter.  she leaves for other places, he inevitably returns to the water.  even if she does as well they will often swim around one another, missing each other by breathes and seconds, the kingdoms more warm towards him than her.  but still they find each other finally, inevitably, and time is a nothing.  how can it be for creatures so old, that float through time as observers in their own right?  

it’s a feeling of right that brings them constantly back together, gatsby thinks.  jealousy is for other people.  and so what, then, could be more powerful than someone who does not feel jealous of the hunger in your heart, but wishes to hear of it?  to eat your stories like your passion and keep both close.  sacred.  a push and play, a game with no loser, and that’s what they prefer to the soreness and tragedy that could come from other lovers.  

even if he has a small concern for vik and her other choices in bed partners, he won’t ruin the play between them with it.  dragyn.  murder and death and monstrosity.  of course she would want to pull such a thing down with her, to take apart with lust and chew through the violence with sensuality instead.  love for aggression.  or, gatsby amends, romance.  love as he knows it from the tales of others is not something vik desires.

     “your concepts of delicate never match those of traditional types.”  there’s soft laughter as he moves his hands down to curve around vik’s waist, squeezing with just enough pressure to feel the shadow of her bones beneath skin and flesh.  she’s such a small thing.  a precious thing.  gatsby catches her mouth again and lingers there until his lungs ache and beg to be parted.  then, breathless, “the ocean wasn’t enough for you.  fire would be what for once makes a cage seem just on the right edge of pleasant.”

those would be love letters gatsby would keep, punch a hole through and string on chain to wear around his own neck.

     “humans do best with themselves.”  gatsby says, a delicate comment both less cruel yet more cutting than vik’s.  her urgency is thrumming inside of her like an overwhelmed record player, the sound about to skip and scatter as the needle goes haywire beneath the pressure of too much sensation all at once.  he kisses her again, deeper, nips at her bottom lip just to leave the ache behind.  “no one in particular.  not yet.  testing the waters is... enough of a joy for me right now.  i like the way people shiver when you look at them for a moment longer than they expect.”

There are many things that can easily catch Ahreum’s interest when it comes to music, and a beautiful voice is one of them, but it’s still not as much as a good bunch of rosin for her violin and cello! So it’s only after she gets her hands on a pair of small boxes of rosin that she notices the beautiful singing further into the store — she smiles when she looks at the man by the microphone, and she slowly makes her way to back of the shop to join the group of people watching him sing, and she can tell there’s something different about him by the way everybody reacts to his voice. Even she herself feels something different, it’s almost like there’s a magnet between the music and her ears.

She stands farther than most people, with a big smile on her lips as she holds her supplies close to her chest the entire time, until the song is over. And once the man is done singing, she joins the group again on a small and discreet round of applause to express admiration to the man standing there, and she stays there when everybody else walks away. She stands still in place and once she has enough room to walk towards the stranger, she smiles a bit wider at him and speaks, her voice sounds gentle and sweet. 

“That was so beautiful!” A soft chuckle escapes her lips, her eyes almost disappear into small crescents. “I didn’t know we had another musician here in South Dakota, and so close to Rapid City! Congratulations, sir… Both your store and your voice are wonderful, and you’re so talented.”

gatsby hears her almost before he sees her; a voice that acts as herald, summons your attention to the near deafening brightness and joy that overcomes every syllable and trips over every word.  it’s no small impression that she leaves behind as he looks at her, considers her, leaning back some as the tension of something like this, more intent than soft songs behind the counter, finally leaks from his bones and leaves him comfortable.  willing to speak despite the subtle ache in his throat from so many songs.

     “thank you.”  a soft voice, almost broken from the strain.  it’s hoarse enough that he clears his throat while glancing about, no water bottle in sight.  forgotten, then.  gatsby’s been forgetful more often than not in recent days and hours.  an excess of work maybe.  or an excess of stress.  “you’re too nice.  most of my time is behind the counter, not in this corner.”

though always singing, never a halt to the meandering from gatsby’s throat.  just less focused intent behind it when he’s far away from stage and focus, more a white noise, a background for guests.  he can’t help but find it unpleasant to be elsewhere when it’s forced.  performances in the syren kingdom are necessary, of course, and full of attention and appraise.  but upon land-- well.  avoiding that is what gatsby likes more than anything.  

even now the itch in his skin hasn’t fully faded.  his stomach feels knotted, a pressure that he gently rests his hand against even as he stands, politely stepping by the young woman who’s lingered to head back to his preferred spot in metronome.  “our hired performer never arrived.  it’s unfortunate, but i couldn’t just let the hour slide by empty.”

bold.      always   /  usually applies italic.      only applies situationally   /   sometimes

𝚍𝚎𝚏𝚎𝚗𝚜𝚒𝚟𝚎𝚗𝚎𝚜𝚜.   arms  crossed  on  chest / hugging oneself.     crossing  legs.     fist-like  gestures.     pointing  index  finger.     karate  chops.     stiffening  of  shoulders.     tense  posture.    curling  of  lip.     baring  of  teeth.

𝚛𝚎𝚏𝚕𝚎𝚌𝚝𝚒𝚟𝚎.     hand  to  face  gestures.      head  tilted.      stroking chin.      peering  over   glasses.      taking glasses  off  —  cleaning.      putting  earpiece  of  glasses  in mouth.       pipe  smoker  gestures.      putting  hand  to  the  bridge  of  nose.    pursed  lips.     knitted  brows.

𝚜𝚞𝚜𝚙𝚒𝚌𝚒𝚘𝚗.  arms  crossed.     sideways  glance.    touching  or  rubbing  nose.    rubbing  eyes.     hands  resting  on  weapon.     brows  rising.     lips  pressing  into  a  thin  line.     strict  unwavering  eye  contact.   wrinkling  of  nose.

𝚘𝚙𝚎𝚗𝚗𝚎𝚜𝚜 & 𝚌𝚘𝚘𝚙𝚎𝚛𝚊𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗.   open  hands.     upper  body  in  sprinters  position.      sitting  on  the  edge  of  a  chair.      hand-to-face gestures.      unbuttoned  coat.    tilted  head.   slacked  shoulders.      droopy  posture.      feet  pointed  outward.      palms  flat  and  facing  outward.

𝚌𝚘𝚗𝚏𝚒𝚍𝚎𝚗𝚌𝚎.    hands  behind  back.     hands  on  lapels  of  coat.   steepled  hands.   baring  teeth  in  a  grin.   rolling  shoulders.     tipping  head  back  but maintaining  eye  contact.     chest  puffed  up.    shoulders  back.    arms  folded  just  above  navel.

𝚒𝚗𝚜𝚎𝚌𝚞𝚛𝚒𝚝𝚢 & 𝚊𝚗𝚡𝚒𝚎𝚝𝚢.   chewing  pen  or  pencil.      rubbing  thumb  over  opposite  thumb.      biting  fingernails.    hands  in  pockets.     elbow  bent.     closed  gestures.     clearing  throat.      “ whew ”  sound.      picking  or  pinching  flesh.     fidgeting  in  chair.   hand  covering  mouth  whilst  speaking.     poor  eye  contact.      tugging  at  pants  whilst  seated.      jingling  money  in pockets.      tugging  at  ear.    perspiring  hands.    playing  with  hair.    swaying.     playing  with  pointer or marker.      smacking  lips.     sighing.    rocking  on  balls  of  feet.  flexing  fingers  sporadically.

SONG: time out - interlude, rina sawayama

     “that’s a deadly guess for it’s purpose.”  gatsby’s voice breaks through the song lyrics as quickly as it sinks back into them, there and gone again like you could blink and miss it, not realize the young looking thing said anything at all beyond the words an unseen woman sings to bright bubbly beats.  just the humor lingers, tainting even the song as he joins voice to voice and, for moments, waves that knife along with the rise and fall of notes.  it takes a moment for him to still.  

then the knife is drawn properly downwards, slicing effortlessly into the flesh of the neatly sized pomegranate that he holds above metronome’s counter.  red liquid drips down the sides of it as, carefully, gatsby sets the knife down onto a paper towel. stains blossom there.  pinks and reds depending on their darkness, all beautiful as the very fruit that he twists with both hands and, unceremoniously, splits it in half.  he laughs.  taking in both the face of the human before him and the mess on his hands down, small rivulets that pool on his knuckles before preparing to drip away.  

gatsby hums and offers one half out across the counter.  the less messy of the two, with cleaner edges and juice glistening but not yet spilled around the sides.  it’s a benign offering.  just symbolic enough for anyone cautious to pause and check themselves, assuage fears that they have vanished from the modern times and modern buildings into something more decrepit and ancient in thought.  there is, after all, reason enough for pomegranates to survive through history as symbolism as much as edibles.  delicious and destructive.  that’s a tag line, gatsby thinks, the corner of his mouth pulling up.  more befitting other syrens he knows than himself.  

     “knives aren’t for guests,” gatsby says, “not in the store.  especially polite ones trying to spend their summer out of the heat.”  for it is hot, scalding outside enough to make the asphalt shimmer when he looks at it through the windows that make up the outside wall of the store.  a relief to be indoors.  he can already feel the call of that lake from so far away, a balm to the scream for ocean water licking at his skin and making him clean.  

for now he makes due with the liquid from the fruit in his hands.  picking at it, swallowing greedily at every bit that clings to his fingers only to run down his throat.  then, dryly, or perhaps with a hint of other things, “enjoy that one.  not everyone calls me pretty.”

“i suppose it is,” she agrees mildly. “you know how i am about the little things.” she doesn’t really get angry about it, if things go wrong. she merely realigns. but she does very much like the comforts that she has. good coffee. good ramen. good baths, especially. if nothing else, the most pleasant part of her day is ending it with a bath, where she can stretch out and let her skin fall apart and expose the glittering scales underneath. as detached as indigo is from syren culture, she is not detached from herself. her nature and her being can exist outside the kingdoms.

she laughs, though, when gatsby brings up the hellish coffee chain that so dominates the surface, at least in america. starbucks is a staple. and her twin is entirely right. their hot coffee especially is dismal, and that’s mostly what she drinks. she’s been to the starbucks on the corner a few times with one of her bosses, and every time, she ends up getting an equally upsetting iced coffee. “then go drink something at starbucks after all,” she tells him lightly, grinning a little wider. “you’ll get coolant with some terrible mix-in to really drive the point home.”

in some ways, it’s been good to watch gatsby joke more and more easily on the surface. it makes every return back down to the sea more and more stifling, of course, as a result, but it’s a result they simply have to grin and bear. they had to learn to adjust to the back and forth. and yet, despite all this time, the switch sometimes still makes indigo’s stomach pitch and ache, a sickness at all the remarkable differences between them.

humans talk often about jet lag, about how traveling wears them down and throws their bodies off as they pass through time zones. she imagines it’s the same thing, but from the tension that always comes every time they descend below the seas. “i’ll be there,” she says immediately, a reassurance and a promise. “if we’re lucky they’re the ones who will feel off about being on the surface, and i’ll have all the advantages in the world. i won’t mention it. just let them feel sick about it for once.” rather than that same sickness she feels in the kingdoms below.

slowly, indigo rubs gatsby’s shoulder. reassuring. soft. “i know you’re convincing,” she says, watching as he pours the tea. her hand half-moves forward to pour tea for herself, but he’s already there.

“cried, mostly.” it’s a clipped way to describe it, but lately she’s been aiming for that simplicity of language. “not wailing. silent and heaving. fewer words. they held everything in their expressions, though. all of it, crystallized right there. they told me a lot about her, like they were spilling over with the telling of it.”

she laughs a little. “mm. philip doesn’t think about me in that way. he’s fine with his brother, and he’s fine with me, but is very happily married to his wife. he’ll only go if his brother asks him to, but… death doesn’t stop for a festival. he’ll probably just stay locked up tending to all the cadavers.”

     “at our age,” gatsby says while so keenly aware of how those words may sound to anyone, pleased for it, “little things are crucial.  i can’t imagine how tedious this all would be without them.”  funny how many of their examples of those little things would be the same; funnier how many would be different.  an i want compared to a we want.  she prefers coffee.  gatsby doesn’t like caffeine, doesn’t like the jitters in his body, orders creamy things or fruit drinks that make indigo’s coffee look even starker black against them.  ramen is good, but he eats more of the gyoza that come with them.  tempura.  the sides seem to fascinate, but maybe that’s a side effect of being on the side for her all these years.  it’s a bad comparison, he thinks, but if they were food... 

still, that’s uncomfortably freudian.  gatsby’s never been fond of the man or his concepts.  

he turns his palm upwards as she speaks.  watches the lines of his palm and the veins within his wrist, so slender and pale blue that at times he thinks they’d be invisible without the slight rise and pulsating pressure around where they trail.  it’s like new tattoos.  gatsby’s touched enough of those on customers happy to show them off, how the ink is ridged ever so slightly.  scar tissue that won’t be permanent in how it juts from the skin.  veins are his only tattoo markings, his only sign of difference.  slightly off just like everybody else’s.  another attempt at a fingerprint.

the fascination in these things doesn’t ever end or leave him.  sure, they exist beneath the water -- but they’re different then.  for gatsby as much as other syrens; the new ones come up to gather information out of the harem of madness that he’s set in motion will no doubt by caught in still moments staring at the way their body reacts to this new pressure, new temperature, the dry air instead of the rich wetness of water.  it’s a distraction of sorts.  “you always have an advantage against them.  no one knows what it’s like, outside of their walls...  no one else.  remember, we’re brave creatures.”  it’s said ironically  bitter as the vinegar still lingering as an aftertaste in his mouth.  “you’re impressive to them like that.  more convincing than i’ll ever be.”

the last bit is soft, matter of fact.  even as he leans into the pressure of her touch, hungry and shameless for it.

     “...they can’t hold her anymore.”  gatsby says, considering  “physically but also.  memory.  feeling.  they don’t know how to contain everything that was once someone they used to love.  being dead effects everyone but the dead person.  i guess,” he pushes his mouth against her shoulder for a moment.  exhales.  “you’re a doula for them.”

an unfortunately close term.  children don’t deserve to be taken away from the world so quickly.  there’s too much that was suppose to belong them, things that they’ll never get to see for the first time, for the last.  that, gatsby has always thought, matters.  knowing when you’ll see something for the final time, and being able to memorize it or fully enjoy it because of that.  it’s hard to live with that thought in your head if you’re a dark person  he can picture himself falling into it quickly.  trying to experience everything all at once, so much, that he ends up abandoning what matters most for it.  

so is death kind to be quick?  

that’s a question for indigo, more than anything.  for her bosses and other coworkers, and most of all the families that come to see her during moments of high tension and crucifying grief.  

is the audiobook lazy? he debated it with himself on the walk over here, half of his brain running through the checklist (crosswalks, stopping, starting, checking who’s around him), and the other half debating the merits of what he wanted to buy. the idea of audiobook sometimes feels like a replacement for the nights that he couldn’t do the things other parents could do. when he was out too late and couldn’t read the boys bedtime stories. when winona and then a babysister had to do it instead. garrett tried to fit it in at least once per week, consistently.

but he couldn’t do it every week. sometimes things got bad. sometimes he had to leave town, and he would talk to the boys on the phone every night. because that was all that he could do, in the end, distance and time and energy all valuable commodities that he had to portion out.

“i wasn’t expecting this place to have things like this,” he admits, stepping into the room to examine the shelves. “thought it’d be more straightforward. i like it, though. if i wasn’t under duress, then i’d probably be a lot happier to look around. i - well, it’s a nice setup, this whole place.” duress. that’s what this is. he loves his sons, but it can be stressful when everything finally starts to compound and build on each other. sometimes it all builds up to something that he can hardly handle - like this.

but he does have a plan, and it seems to be a functioning one. he blinks at all the choices, considering this. “he’s not that picky about that kind of thing,” garrett admits slowly. “the local woman thing might be kind of good for him, though. not just the same few people he likes to listen to. have you listened to it?” basically asking for any opinion on the quality of the whole recording. something local could be innovative and something interesting, or the quality could be poor. it’s worth asking without being quite so rude to the woman in question.

     “it was a redesign,” gatsby tells him as he shelters himself against the shelving, hard lines of wood digging into his spine and shoulders.  “these parts, at least -- the rest wasn’t construction based.”  just creativity and adjustment.  orders from other shops to bring better displays, better shelving, better lights with softer decor to stop detracting from everything important within the shop.  from the bottom up, making metronome into a musical sort of wonderland for adults as much as youths.  

if he was honest though, he hadn’t considered that it could stress others out before.  few come in with a rush behind them though, fewer still who don’t slow down to a sluggish meandering once the song strikes them.  gatsby’s stomach pulls.  temptation to start singing once again, closer now, more focused until the man before him doesn’t have to hide that mania in his eyes behind a polite gauze.  if he tries hard enough, after all, it’ll just erase by itself.  nothing bad behind it.  just comfort -- an offer or a promise to breathe easy, even if just for a moment.

but the man keeps him talking.  funny, when a mortal runs across the best way to silence a syren without being keen upon just how smart they are.  good omens or not, no one wants to be controlled.  no one’s content with it.  

but it’s always the mortals who accidentally silence them before the spell can take effect.

     “i’ve listened to everything here, most of it all the way through.”  gatsby answers honestly.  “albums fully.  audiobooks in pieces.  her voice-- it’s pleasant.  lilting and yet deep.  almost... smoky  if you’ve taken the time to listen to nina simone you’ll know the sound i’m speaking off, but with more petals to the voice than just jazz clubs and old dreams.”

after a moment, he hovers near a collection of audiobooks. he’s never been fond of them, but he can see the convenience of them, even now. his fingers brush along some of the cases, flicking through them, the heavy thunk of plastic against plastic as each case collides with the one behind it. he uses that sound to fill silence, impact making up for everything else. when he walked into the shop, he paid attention. syrens always have a certain aura, and the singing said enough. their voices are some of their best tools, besides the sharpness of their scales.

dominion, of course, has a renewed interest in syrens ever since their more recent contact with the surface world. a faction now present instead of glaringly absent.

“it’s still quite impolite of me,” rafael says, “to impede your way home too much. i’ll take my leave soon enough.” of course. he is polite most of the time, careful about what he says and does. offense only happens when it’s more useful to him than a kind of cold civility. it’s not particularly sincere, yes, but civility is still civility. it still has the same results whether or not he really means it.

he tilts his head a little at the explanation for the start of the store. so from nothing to something across the exchange of hands. “you certainly seem to be doing that. some good contacts and a few good collectors make all the difference in the world.” he taps his fingers on the edge of a display. “do you know neil morris, over in rapid city? he’s got an enormous vinyl collection, and he’s old enough now where he occasionally looks to get rid of a few rare records. let someone else listen to them, or so he says.” of course rafael knows other collectors. he focuses on texts, but inevitably you learn about others, a web of contacts stretching around the globe. some are human. some are not.

the man in rapid city is, but he was born with money and has poured the excess over years into his predilections.

what a dry humor this is, the attempted seduction through politeness from a man who gatsby doubts could truly mean what he says, the way he deigns to say it.  were that he chose honesty.  but what is that to a monster, what is that for something magnificent and cruel, so much so that they do not know how to be anything else?  gatsby likes to play with those types, the ones who do not know truth even if it belongs to themselves.  suggest absent songs and albums with titles that a clever thing would take as a personal reading.  fools, an insult.  the honest wouldn’t recognize what he was saying -- 

and those are his favorites, really.  anyone that falls apart to music just like they do around bartenders or tattoo artists.  but this man likely has clean skin.  drinks without sensation building in the pit of his belly.  boring, gatsby thinks, that kind of living.  at least he falls to liquor like all the others, even if his skin is still bare from the kiss of a needle and ink.  

     “yes,” gatsby answers softly, a gentle toned needling as he blows small bubbles of blue gum between his teeth and pops them, “it’s a habit you need to stop.  every evening you show up and keep me just a minute after curfew before heading out.  here i presumed you had no concept of what you were doing, but it was a plot, wasn’t it?  hopes to get the newcomer arrested.”

he pauses for the effect of it as much as to gather the strands of gum on his fingertips, curve them back into a delicate ball that he bites down on.  clean of residue, just a sticky dampness left behind that gatsby wipes on his jeans.  only when the time has gotten almost uncomfortable, verging on awkward does he come back to himself, to the present.  blinking as though he had floated away somewhere else during those moments of silence.

     “or there’s nothing to apologize for.”  gatsby adds, absent and softer, barely audible as he leans back onto his palm.  blinking owlishly as he moves onto the other subject as if the dramatics had never occurred at all.  “yes.”  neil morris isn’t a well liked man.  most rich, old, hoarders aren’t known for their kindness or good personalities though.  gatsby can’t imagine why he’d be liked at all.  but he does have a lovely collection, and if a lilting voice sings some of his favorite songs to him in return for freedom to peruse and claim some...

who’s to blame him?  the mortal won’t keep them forever.  let someone else know it’s joy.

The water of the lake doesn’t embrace his body the same way the ocean would do, but it is enough to bring Eros a little bit of comfort and the closest he might ever get to the sea again. No, he doesn’t think his act of ‘betrayal’ to the Crown could get him expelled from the kingdom, he doesn’t think they’d go far enough to curse him to the point where he could never step into the ocean again ( which is why they decided to kill him instead ), but he doesn’t want to go back to the ocean. At least, not the North Atlantic. The Nehalennia Kingdom doesn’t deserve him, the queen doesn’t deserve him and he is sure of that after what has been done to him. She doesn’t care and never did, all that matters is the absolute power the queen possesses.

He can’t help the quiet chuckle that escapes from his lips when Gatsby sinks back into the lake though, and he just swims further into the water, just enough to have his shoulders submerged. Once the other syren rises back up, Eros doesn’t take his eyes off of him, and follows the older of the two swim around him with his gaze — the smile doesn’t leave his lips though, genuine and fragile, something he doesn’t get to offer to people so often. Only a few are lucky enough to see Eros’ true smiles and not his many suspicious grins. Gatsby has to be one of them.

Gatsby speaks and his words warm the younger’s heart, a warmth he hasn’t felt in so long after he was captured by the humans and taken away from the kingdom. He could almost cry, and he would if Gatsby wasn’t standing right in front of him already.

“My queen,” Eros repeats, and this time it’s a dry chuckle that leaves his lips, as well as a bitter smile. “My queen killed me, Gatsby.” He has to take a deep breath, the mere thought of what happened years ago turning the comfortable and gentle warmth that Gatsby brought to his chest into something bigger, wider, hotter and more dangerous. It became painful.

“She killed me, just like she did to many others — but I was lucky enough to have survived, escaped from the fate she had chosen for me. Unlike many others, who were in fact murdered, I was just taken away to a place where not even the ocean could locate me. My queen, you say… she is anything but my queen.”

He looks fragile, soft.  Like a creature who has been flayed to pieces and put back together with more delicate bones and heart than before.  It is tragic, unfortunate, but Gatsby finds himself briefly caught struggling to remember who Eros was so long ago -- for the younger of them at least, just a droplet in the ocean of time for himself -- and how that old self compares to the syren now swimming before him.  Was he as terribly small then?  Was he wilder and far more cruel, like any other syren too young to hide their hunger at the stories told by Gatsby and Indigo’s mouths?  Or was this always him, him, just darker shades with the bruises left behind on poor Eros’ heart?  

Gatsby exhales slowly.  A sound that tears through his chest at the words now spilling out of his companion, more poisoned and brittle than anything he has heard for many years.  “Your queen.”  Like an echo, a parroting that is not carried by the air around them but swallowed away.  Were he any quieter, he wonders if they would have been taken away and muffled before Eros could hear them.  The very depths of himself feels quieter now in the face of an accusation so bold, so cutting -- into Eros, ten thousand cuts -- that proper words fail Gatsby for many long, silent moments.  

It is not a question of how impossible this claim could be.  He is no fool.  Queens are all powerful, and if the oceans answer to them for deaths then surely the oceans will cause them just as effortlessly.  They will twist societies from the dregs to their own daughters and useless sons, so clever and cautious that even if instincts beg, promise something is wrong, there are no words for those within her harem to accuse her with.  No one is brave enough.  Not of Arkic, not Nehalennia.  Certainly not even those stripped of their bindings to the sea would speak of she who once ruled them with anything but kindness or at least, brutal passivity.  

He wonders at how uncomfortable it makes him.  Twisting in his belly as Gatsby swallows, circles around Eros once more before stilling.  Back to a rock jutting from the deepest edge of the lake where no beach gradually meets thinning water.  It aches.  Threatens to cut.  Gatsby, for small moments, brings comfort from that clarity of wounds.  

“You’re making huge claims.”  Gatsby says, voice wavering to stay as distant as he can.  “And sounding a bit insane because of them -- it’s been years and all you have to say is a Queen killed you?  What of how it happened, or why?"

she wonders if he hears the compliment all the time. he probably does. people will say just about anything to fill silence, and the compliment must come off as something token. it’s not. it’s a lot for her to even say, but she wouldn’t blame him if he reads it as something somehow patronizing. florence knows that she can read things that way a lot of the time. the assumption that people are out to hurt her or that they’re being intentionally dishonest, ulterior motives brimming underneath words - it’s damaging, yeah, but what isn’t?

but then he keeps going, rather than stopping, so maybe she did manage to sound genuine enough. maybe he knows he sounds good. that’s cool, too. good for him.

“it’s not for you?” she blurts out, on instinct. in florence’s humble film student opinion, art should also be fulfilling for you. “sorry, shit. not my problem. i guess i just… i don’t know. i think performing for other people all the time and never for yourself can be shitty. i’m probably just reading too much into it. ignore me.” like that - a bullet right in the heart of it. just ignore her. it’s fine. her eyes flicker back down to the records on instinct, her fingers nudging a few records towards the front of the display in a ploy to look busy.

still, though, she can’t help but continue the conversation. it would be rude not to, and that’s just as much of a drive as anything else. she doesn’t want to talk; she also doesn’t want to make things worse for people trying to talk to her. “i, uh, yeah. hospice, by the antlers, on vinyl? it’s old by music standards, which is like…. a decade. but you seem to have a lot of stuff, so maybe you have it. the original or the reissue is fine. i’m not picky about that kind of thing.”

she kind of wants to keep the joke going - haha, i’m looking for my stupid sad boy singing with a piano album, what about it? at the same time, though, she figures she’s said enough. he didn’t fucking ask why she was looking for something, anyway.

oh, there’s a fluttering to her.  a tragedy that she stitches into every one of her words with her humble shame, her self dismissal and carefully formatted carelessness.  he cannot help but watch her with a solemnness to his eyes, the soft but rapid blinking as though clearing away invisible tears.  trying to catch everything that she does, from her stretched out fingers to the way her hair curls and shifts with small breezes brought in by the fans cooling metronome to a reasonable temperature.  a distant part of him wonders what would happen if he reached out to touch her wrist.  press his thumb against the veins bulging out in shades of color, kissing them with his own touch, a slow back and forth motion.

would that soothe her or make her feel scalded, like boiling water on her skin?  a desire for the former, a distaste of the latter, and yet the risk feels worthy.  gatsby lays his hands flat on the counter before him to cool that urge, cut it out of him for now.

     “it’s always for me,” gatsby replies, gentle in his voice despite the locked stare upon her; passive as it is.  “a little bit.  what matters more is you’ve never been here, you might never come back.  so it’s new.  it’s for you.”  and that’s what matters, the memory, the building of it.  he will be part of what every guest remembers from metronome; if he cannot be something pure and beautiful, a curiosity or a wound or something to be excised, cannot be something...  there is no point to it.  gatsby wants to leave fingerprints behind like a ghost in every stranger’s life.  

a small smile twists their mouth up.  “bad praxis to ignore a guest.  only if it makes you comfortable.”  

but that would be an oddity now, the conversation has started and he’s loosened her tongue.  everyone wants for something when they enter metronome.  maybe not at first; not even as a focused intent.  but she does that to them like a subliminal sound, a white noise beneath gatsby’s singing that lures the guests who enter to seek their own desires.  he makes them stay, of course.  but metronome makes them realize themselves.  and here she is, her own wants spilling out of her mouth.  water from a spigot.  gatsby drinks it down in silence, considering, the album familiar as everything else hidden away within the store’s walls.

then, after a moment, he clears his throat.