the sea monster agenda

Rain pelts the surface of the Eastern Sea the night his sister comes home.

There's no rain in the palace, so far beneath the water, but the son of the dragon king--even a seventh son--feels the rain in his bones. Ao Xuan lifts his gaze from his qin to the gilded ceiling, then closes his eyes and plucks another string with one claw, listening through the vibration as it reverberates through the water.

"Qi-ge," the girl calls, high-spirited, as she drifts through the archway into the chamber. Ao Xuan opens his eyes to find his sister mid-spin, eyes bright, waving the long sleeves of her gown. "I'm home!"

He places a hand across the zither strings to still them, lifts his own sleeve up to his mouth to hide his smile. He wants to seem serious, at least, when he admonishes her.

"You've yet to greet our royal father, but you've come to see me." Ao Xuan lowers his sleeve as the girl pouts. "Don't tell me you've left all propriety up in the Heavens as well?"

"Qi-ge is the best to Yuhe, so naturally Yuhe will come greet him first," she says, cloyingly, propping her elbows on the qin.

"Get," he replies, aiming a clawed flick at her forehead, which she dodges with a nimble backward flip and a startled laugh.

"Don't you want to hear what I've been doing?"

Ao Xuan scoffs, rising from the instrument at last. "What is there to do up there? Pick fruit for someone else to eat, brew tea for someone else to drink?"

Perhaps he once held that same level of reverence for the Heavens, but it's long since lost its lustre. When their mother still liked to move freely between the skies and the sea, he would often follow, eager to see anything that wasn't his father's halls. But palaces are palaces whether in the clouds or on the ocean floor, and he soon found the places in between to be much more interesting.

"This is why everyone calls you gloomy, Qi-ge. You make everything sound worse than it really is."

"Oh?" He lets his claws retract back into skin, reaches out to tap her in the spot between her eyes, where a round black pearl sits. "Then you must be sure to tell his majesty how much you enjoy serving tea. Perhaps he'll put in a word and they can have you back sooner."

He would feel worse, making fun of her excitement, but it's a familiar pattern with them, and Yuhe hardly takes these things to heart.

"You'll come with Yuhe next time, won't you?" she simpers. "You complain about being cooped up all the time, but you never go anywhere fun."

"The land is fun. The skies are not fun."

The girl's eyes brighten at that, mischievous and golden.

"Then let's go play on land! Qi-ge likes that little fishing village, so we can start there, and then--"

"We'll discuss it once you've greeted father. And the crown prince."

"Taizi1-gege is back too?" Yuhe beams. "He'll have presents for Yuhe as well. Ah, then Yuhe mustn't tarry."

She does another little whirl in the water, her sleeves a tangle of silk but not one hair out of place, and she dashes through the archway with the grace of a shark.

Ao Xuan sits back down at his qin and smiles, shaking his head. He doesn't expect her back any time soon, but he's already decided that their little trip will happen. Whether the girl remembers it by the time she comes back or not is irrelevant. It would do her good to get a glimpse of the real world, he decides. It would do him good to remember it.

--

The fishing village on the coast is Ao Xuan's home away from home. The people are friendly, though not too friendly as to be a bother, and they tend to be too smart or too busy to think too hard about things like "I remember you lookin' just like that when I was just a boy."

Rainy days are the best, when the locals gather in the tavern, the xiao er running back and forth shouting "Ei!" as his name is called. There's always a fisherman's girl playing pipa in the corner and Ao Xuan likes to pester her to teach him the new songs, which she'll happily do for a smile and a silver.

He likes the fair days as well, when the winds are just temperate enough for him to play kites with the kids. Ao Xuan buys a dragon kite from the shopkeep every time, but the kids' always fly the highest.

It's a beautiful day today, with a gentle wind from the east. His sister should be emerging soon, he hopes. He had spoken to the servants to make sure she found her way to the pier, shortly before leaving the palace himself.

Ao Xuan, the Eastern Sea Dragon King's qitaizi, while not a glamourous dresser by his family's standards, still turns heads in his normal attire. So whenever he's out on a trip like this, he opts for a plainer look. Today, it's an all black round-collared outer robe lined with silver, a tasteful trail of clouds embroidered down one sleeve. Just enough to look like a young master of some minor importance with too much free time.

He's sitting on the dock, tapping his gathered fan against his knee, when Yuhe finally arrives. He barely recognises her at first glance. Gone is her usual double-hooped hair2 and the buyao 3 their mother had gifted her before she left, and gone are the pretty silks she favours. Her hair is brushed back, held tight in a bun with a silver ribbon.

Ao Xuan gives her an appraising look from head to toe. Chest flat. Clothes modest, but not too modest. A sword at her hip. She's done an admirable job of looking like a young gongzi.

"Well? How'd I do?" Yuhe grins. Ah, her voice hasn't changed, either.

"So-so." He prods her chest. "You've fixed this."

She looks down at her chest, proudly. The last time she'd attempted this transformation, her body had tried to compensate for the lack of weight. But now it was a perfectly flat young man's chest, with no abnormalities elsewhere. Except...

Ao Xuan flicks his finger up to her chin.

"Your face is still your face. Didn't you learn any transformations on your Heavenly excursion?"

"Qi-ge, you're the only one who's this critical!" Yuhe scowls. "Even Tianpeng Yuanshuai4 back in the day only knew 36 transformations and I hear he wasn't even that good! As long as I don't sprout a pig's snout, I'll be just fine!"

He senses he's stepped just slightly over the line, so he lets it go, gently putting his hand on her shoulder. It had been her idea to pose as a man for their excursion, and it was a decent one. Better man than donkey. Donkeys were tricky, even for Ao Xuan.

"I'm sure," he tells her, kindly. "And when they run you out of town, I'll be at your heels."

She aims a kick at his feet, which he dodges as he steps ahead, lifting an arm to point down the dirt road.

"To the stables, young master?"

A decisive nod, with the excited confidence of a girl who has never been on or near a horse that wasn't also her cousin and a dragon.5

"To the stables."

Crown prince. In mythology, the dragon king's songs are xxth Taizi and all his daughters xx Long Nu (Dragon Girl). ↩︎

"Shuang Huan Wang Xian Ji" Tang dynasty hairstyle, looks like this ↩︎

hairpin with decorations that swing as you walk (example) ↩︎

Better known as Zhu Bajie of Journey to the West fame ↩︎

loss is a continuous motion. it is airlessness and insomnia and you are always losing something. you have been losing since the day you were born.

(the house always wins, they say, but the old man scratches in the numbers every day, diligent, dedicated.)

you lose people like you lose teeth; with great effort and trepidation to make way for something else to grow, larger, sharper, just as impermanent.

there is no point to loss, it simply is. and there is no point to counting loss-- counting never saved anyone. numbers don't care for lives.

(numbers were cold, but his life was numbers on pages, warm hands, crow's feet.)

so do not count the trust that you've lost, or who you have disappointed. do not count the baby teeth that someone turned into coins. do not count the seconds lost being less than what you imagined you would be when you were small.

loss is a continuous motion. it moves no matter what you do or how many numbers you fill the spaces with.

The worst thing about being followed by a persistent hallucination is how accommodating one's mind is to said hallucination. At least, that's Midorima's initial thought. In reality, the worst thing about it is the singing. And the talking. And the complete and utter refusal to be ignored or dispelled.

"Shut up," he snaps at last, eyes firmly set on the scene before him— the empty plaza, still humming with neon light, glowing and devoid of all human life. "Shut up," he repeats himself, firmly. "I watched you die."

And he had. Watched the man slip past him, cleanly into the line of the blow, pulled the damn sword from the body himself, watched the life drain from the man's eyes—

But I'm right here, the ghost protests, its voice vibrating with electronic laughter. Must be your lucky day.

"You're a shadow."

I'm your shadow.

The words are so cruel as to be absurd, and Midorima won't have the air knocked out of him by something so plainly illogical.

FEBRUARY (I) don't worry about dying alone, you said, waving the nail polish in your hand, splotching red over my fingers. we'll make a suicide pact. you fell asleep across my legs that night, the first time in years, the first time since we were kids watching stars on the porch. that was the night i settled for you and you settled for me.

MARCH we'll never be like those people, you said, promised, rather, listening to a couple bicker behind us. your hand slipped slowly towards mine, just close enough for our knuckles to touch. we'll never be like my parents, i said, and that made you laugh, even though secretly i admired them; holding together a dead marriage like intestines spilling from a stomach wound, kept inside by ordinary hands.

APRIL you said you didn't know the difference between a metaphor and a simile. which was, like, total bullshit. my body is a calendar, you said, and you're like, the dates and shit? you had me write numbers up your arms, over the ridges and city lines on your freckled skin and when i was done you inspected the work and said: on second thought, probably just ink poisoning.

Your skin is adorned with summer-scars come fall and you wear them like badges, medals gleaming red on flesh, far too bright to go on the shelf to gather dust beside someone else’s conquests. But with no golden façade to vanish behind,

Your summer-scars glow white come winter and however unearthly, you remain no angel. Spread so bare but for your invisible trophies that turn the seekers with string-hardened fingers into skin-cartographers.

Your maps are lost and summer-scars bloom come spring. Red on white once more you stand a sweet tribute to peppermints uneaten, cloaked in plastic of last Halloween. They stitch you back together with thread, eyes meandering over blossoms on pale white You tell them, then, that they are landmarks, but

Your scars are only scars come summer, dull now, peach-coloured under sun, aching to be taken and torn. Painted golden-boys mock from behind a glass curtain and you feel their bulbous eyes laugh at how your medals have no names, instead they are sprawling imperfections, they are crawling cracks, and faults across state lines, through mountain ranges.

It hits like a natural disaster without provocation. But somehow you see the warning signs weeks before Hear a stomach-growl in the earth, Tracing fractures in our shoe-worn year-beaten tracks with your heel. You nail my feet to the ground so I don’t shake and I can’t float away. A precaution.

I call you when it comes and I can’t sleep, Ask you to count the dead children in between our electric-signal breaths. One two three one two three— That’s two dead of starvation. One two three one two three— That’s four, and why don’t you care? You say “breathe” like a warding mantra over and over (one, two, three) until my lungs give in to your voice and there is peace for a while.

Sometimes it hits as a screaming storm and takes the whole house down. Nailed in place, I cannot move or click my naked heels. I wait in the dark until someone sweeps aside the debris.

In its aftermath we sit in softer silence, deconstructing my demons to the hum of our metal-detector fingers. I do not have the words to say— I am a refugee now, I have lost my tongue.

One, two, three, one, two, three. This is the sound of life, you say, and whisper what I need to know: that you are real as I am real, that we will build the walls up stronger, and that it will come again.

when you were nine your father sold you to mine. i was fourteen and did not understand why he rattled our gates for days in his regret.

my father chased yours away with dogs. you cried, terrified, and we thought mistakenly, that it was for him.

there is a long white scar on your leg; for years since then i have admired and i have loathed it.

i knew what you were from the beginning i knew that you were insurance but still i could not hate you.

i could not hate you, little wounded cat who followed me through the seasons, waiting for the scraps of affection that i never gave.

we did not know war until my father died. together, we watched from tiled rooftops. together, we watched our golden banner burn.

i was eighteen and you only thirteen, not born for the blade as i was, your only weapon a bamboo broom.

there is not enough time to waste dwelling on how you might have changed me had things been different, instead of i you.

the bamboo broom clutched to your chest was to protect you from dogs; and even that i took away from you.

it was i who put my hands on yours and held that blade against your fingers, i who could never stop you from shaking.

but perhaps for the love of me you graduated from blades to guns and your aim never wavered as we fought.

the story of your calloused hands is a tale of what i did to you but they are fleeting, fast-fading.

you are only twenty and you are dying. our golden banners fly like flags of victory. but i am twenty-five and i have already lost.

they tell me most days you sleep, listening to reports from the battlefront, smiling your ephemeral smile to stories of dead men.

the bed you are dying in is not yours and that sickly white room cannot contain the smell of death as i pass its cold stark door.

they lie when they say you ask for me. you know i could not do it; sit by your side, hold your hands and ask for you to be brave.

it will be you who leaves me, not i who leaves you, when you take the final breath that i would give anything to miss.

you will become my phantom limb and greatest regret. i will feel your arms around my shoulders, your fingers tracing constellations

against the ache of that muscle in my chest which remembers you as you were but could never let you be what you are.

we have to be quiet, you say, your hand inside mine as you lead me into the trees.

someone died in these woods, you say. the steady branch in your steady hand traces the shape of a dirt-boy

then you lay down inside him and you close your eyes and disappear.

you run away when we’re fifteen with a pack of bohemian stoners who smell like butterflies

but nothing masks the scent of earth that clings to every part of you and i am the only one who knows.

nobody knows what to do with you so they let you go and watch the sky for your return.

you tell stories just for them about all the things that you’ve seen then you crawl through my window

you lie still next to me and you close your eyes and vanish.

when we are eighteen i plan to move half-way across the country where they drink tea and sit up straight.

you fucking traitor, you laugh. i seize your steady wrists in my unsteady hands

i kiss you until you stop laughing and fuck you, furious, fighting biting, hissing and kicking—

we have to be quiet, i say, inside you and your fingers dig into my back.

we are still and silent like two boys dead and covered in dirt and mud and secrets.

i lie in the confines of my body and i close my eyes and dream of you.

My father swam the English Channel and did not come back. He left me fineries and a name, untameable curls and a limp, But did not think to give what made him great— His poet’s tongue, his lover’s heart.

My father was a great lover, by all accounts; He spread his love as freely as his seed And gave up its fruits with cold abandon.

When we were young the world was too, and it was easier to know what we were, with rings on our fingers and wind in our hair, before jealous gods turned our beauty to wreckage. But you and I, Charybdis, were monsters long before they said we were.

Now we are told that calamity and shipwreck do not deserve to be loved, that just because you are a monstrous maw in the ocean and I a six-headed beast with more eyes than hearts-- because now we crush men with raging waters and rows of teeth instead of our thighs, we must not aspire to be more than graveyards.

You're mistaken, she explains to the mirror. That's not him. You're mistaken, you're lying.

The woman in the mirror counters with "No, you're the liar," and she considers it, has to concede, then sits down on the cool tiles of the bathroom floor and stays there a while. She's mostly naked, and entirely obstructing the room, but no one else lives here anymore, so it doesn't matter, really, does it.

After about half an hour it occurs to her that he'd be very upset if she got a cold and got water all over the floor so she pulls herself upright and goes to get dressed. It takes entirely too long to find something of his that isn't washed and folded already, but Evangeline Wyndham is an intrepid explorer, and finds it in the form of one of his Very Casual Shirts that he sometimes wears to sleep.

She goes and makes tea. The nice way, not the overly British way he makes it. "With integrity," she swears she hears him say over her shoulder— to her credit, she doesn't turn to check.

She pours two cups because it just makes more sense that way, and sits at their little table, staring at the lemon tarts he'd made the other night. They were going to have them at breakfast, but that didn't end up happening— she'd been called in to consult on a case and he'd gone out for groceries and died.

Best laid plans, and all that.

It feels almost cannibalistic, the thought of eating them by herself.

She finishes her tea, leaves his cup where it is, packs up the tarts and goes to find a coat to put on over the shirt. It's a forty minute ride by taxi to Kaz and Crescent's apartment. She starts talking to the driver but that goes nowhere rather quickly— "My boyfriend died. His eyes were blue. Can you turn the radio up, please?" and she spends the drive wondering what Hector might make of the "latest pop hits" of the day.

The doorman gives her a queer look when she walks in, but she ignores it.

"You're not wearing any shoes, Evangeline," someone points out.

"Be quiet," she replies.

The apartment's on the tenth floor. There's no one else in the elevator and it doesn't stop. Thank god.

"I understand this is difficult, but ..."

She rings the doorbell, smooths down her coat.

"You could have at least put on some pants before venturing out. The city is—"

"You're dead," she snaps, whirling on thin air. "You're dead and you're not my mum and I don't need any pants!"

"... Eva?"

Blearily, blinking very hard, she turns around to find Kazuya watching her with bloodshot eyes. He's not hovering, and that's always unsettling, but it's clear that he's been crying, so Ash must have told him already, which is— it's not nice, but there's some comfort in not having to say it again.

"Hello. I've brought tarts," she says, and suddenly she finds herself sobbing, arms around his neck, tears soaking into his garish robot t-shirt. The bag with the tarts drops to the ground. Through the blur she sees Cres's form appear behind them, and slowly she's pulled inside.

Cres puts the kettle on. She settles on their couch, staring at the row of knocked-down picture frames decorating the shelves. Kaz goes to find her some pants. When he comes back he launches himself down beside her. She hiccups as she pulls the pants on. She's still waiting for the ridiculousness of it to set in, but it just won't. Cres arranges the tarts (slightly squished, moderately ruined) on a plate and sets it in the middle of the coffee table with the tea, then joins them.

For a moment it feels like they're all ten years younger, hiding in the student council room, waiting for everything to go back to normal. But normal isn't even a thing anymore. Nothing's ever been so wrong.