#"fore

There were others that Vessel had never met before in person, yet he felt like he would recognize them from the dreams Sleep sent. Flits of calloused fingers on a guitar neck, chords from black and white keys, smooth brass fueled by breath.

He had met the third one on their last large ritual tour. Sax had been his Sleep-given name, and he had been dressed in the same green robes as the singer did, but his face had been adorned with a golden mask akin to the Espera. When Vessel had questioned it, Sax had only brought up his titular instrument to his exposed mouth as if it would explain everything.

Clearly, it hadn’t, since Sax had grabbed the first band member unlucky to walk by him at the time and had curled a finger around a golden chain attached to their face. “There’s no way that I’m going to have to fight a veil to play my sax,” he had said before letting the chain free, his wide grin framed by the golden edges of the mask.

(III had grumbled about it the entire time, though the blown kiss towards him on stage had seemed to calm him later.)

“So, remind me again why Sleep never mentioned anyone else?” III asked as he stretched upwards like a plant, face bare of any god-given changes as his glamour stuck to him.

YOU NEVER ASKED.

III startled before he swore up a storm as he leaned on II’s shoulder at the intersection. “Fucking hell, I’ll never get used to that new change.”

“Being jumpy?” II asked, even though Vessel knew that the answer was clear.

“The entire —” III vaguely waved one of his hands around to avoid saying it aloud. Not in public, when they were glamoured up and expected to act normal. Human. Not as if their god had recently gained more worship to speak in their waking minds now. “You know.”

Vessel shrugged at the bassist before the intersection symbol blinked and people started to cross on the white lines. IV’s hand tugged at his own and guided him forward, the sea of people in a different city from their own. Loud in a different way. Unfamiliar corners and hole-in-the-wall places. Accents slightly off kilter even when they speak the same general language.

Some things stayed the same though.

The way that IV’s hand tightened around Vessel’s own when the singer rubbed a thumb over the guitarist’s knuckles. The way that III stepped on all the cracks in the sidewalk except for the ones that had flowers growing out of them. The way that II would tap the toes of his shoes against the concrete when some internal count in his head didn’t add up. The way that Vessel himself mentally documented each and every single one of these things, if only to solidify them in his head for a little while longer.

WE HAVE ARRIVED. GO, MY VESSELS. RING YOURSELF IN.

Dare Vessel say, Sleep sounded excited. Excited not like a god would be, not calm and calculating with water rushing in his ears and insect legs chattering up and down his spine. No, Sleep sounded excited like a child about to show off their favorite toy.

“Sleep told us you would be coming,” a voice said in a sing-song tone when Vessel entered the code to the little security panel. It wove through the air, unhampered by the fuzzy static. “You’re Her Vessels. Her special ones.”

A buzz.

“It’s unlocked.”

When they crossed the threshold of the flat’s main halls, something shifted. Sleep’s presence in the air thickened, almost like a fog descended. The god ushered them up, quickly now. Vessel could feel it in his mind how Sleep was almost pacing. He had felt it in his dreams, the frantic energy rushing and running around. Salty water had crashed onto white sands repeatedly, having frothed up a thick foam that had dissipated the moment he had touched it. Birds had cawed in laughter and the flowers that grew from the shore’s rocky edges had been thick with blooms.

When Vessel knocked on the door, all that energy rushed to the forefront of his consciousness. It stole his breath for a moment and he felt someone’s hands on his shoulders to steady him when his feet wobbled. And when that door opened, all that energy amplified, spreading through the public hallway of the flat.

Vessel managed to barely catch the face of the person who opened the door. Or at least, what he expected was a face. Instead, his six glamoured eyes managed to see a black half mask, similar to his first days when the mask and the face were two separate entities. A red sigil wove its way down the center as two eyeholes revealed dark eyes that widened with excitement. A grin and a small laugh drew attention to the person’s mouth, where a silver piercing shone on the center of the bottom lip, lining up with a nose ring.

Familiarity.

Sleep bounced between each of Her vessels, infecting them with energy before diving into the body of the woman who had greeted them. Her entire body shuddered for a moment, her hand gripping the doorknob tightly as her eyes rapidly blinked and her mouth opened and shut silently.

A breath.

“We are fine, my Vessels.”

“Oh fuck, that’s creepy as hell,” IV muttered.

Sleep’s voice mixed with the woman’s in a reverberating echo, and only then did Vessel feel Sleep’s glamour forcefully disappear from everyone. He was thankful that the god had allowed him to glamour now, something about having earned it with his worship. But IV was right: there was something unnerving about the way that Sleep used the woman’s body to coax them into the flat. It was smoother than when Sleep took over their own bodies when asleep, something like a dance instead of a puppeteer.

“This is —”

“Pia. Piano Token,” the woman said, her voice breaking through in a strangled breath. It was musically bright but a bit weak. She grinned at them, her eyes flitting over the golden skull-like faces of Vessel’s bandmates as splotches of Sleep’s touch shifted around her fingers and face. “You are —”

“My vessels. I adore them so. Where is Fore, Pia?”

At that, another person shuffled into view. He was taller than IV and II, though Vessel would estimate that he was still just a bit shorter than himself. Any facial features save for his eyes were obscured by a black balaclava with Sleep’s sigil on it. Vessel hummed as the two of them met each other’s gaze for a breath. Familiarity once again.

The masked person took one look at Pia before he gave a slight nod of his head. “Sleep.”

“Ah, Fore. I enjoyed your offering of music.” One of Pia’s arms swept in a wide arch as she crooked a finger on her other arm. “My vessels. Do not be a stranger inside my of my priests’ flat.”

“Why you picked them to visit us, I will never understand. Tiny-ass flat we got here,” Fore muttered as he pointed to the table in the kitchen. “Sit. Stand. Whatever. Tea?”

“Please,” Vessel replied as he twisted a fidget ring on one of his fingers. It had been a gift for his birthday, something that the others had picked out. Metal rang as the moving bit spun around, twisting his thoughts into something more organized, like spinning thread. “Sleep never mentioned you two before.”

“My mistake. It was not time to reveal them to you then.”

Pia– no, Sleep… no. Vessel shook his head in confusion as he forced his gaze up from his hands to his god inhabiting the woman’s body. “What made the time right?”

“You would not understand. And if I were to try to explain it to you, your mind would not survive.”

Pia’s body shuddered as she leaned against the countertop, one of her elbows nudging against Fore’s side. “Sleep, too much right now. Down, down.”

Fore placed some cups full of warm tea on the table and immediately placed a hand against her back. Sleep’s energy — an endless thing once the god started up — filled the room and rushed up Fore’s arm, creating vague dark handprints as if someone or something were holding him whilst their hands were covered in paint. The marks stayed though, spreading like ink in warm water.

IV maneuvered his way towards Sleep’s priests and asked, “Anything I can do?”

Fore looked at the guitarist, and it felt like a very long minute to Vessel. Somewhere in the depths of his mind, dreams dredged themselves up: guitar strings underneath calloused fingers, slightly different than the ones that the singer knew through memorization, but a musician’s fingers nonetheless.

It dawned on him as if he were slowly dipping himself into the ocean, one step at a time: In a different reality, Fore would’ve been their IV.

But instead, they had Ivy as their IV.

Finally, Fore told IV to keep Pia steady as he turned away to cut up an apple. The thick scent of saltwater filled Vessel’s nose before the crunch of apples filled the quiet flat.

“Thank you,” Pia said, clearing her throat as she swallowed the red fruit. “I’m not meant to hold Sleep for long. That’s what She has you for.”

“Sleep doesn’t control us in our waking hours though,” II said. “But you let Her —”

“Mutual agreement. I was going to be Her first vessel. But It picked differently.” The switch was slower than what Vessel observed with his bandmates. While Sleep was seamless with them, it was like watching something squirm onto the priest’s body and figure out how to work her muscles and nerves. Vessel considered viewing the scene through his different pairs of eyes, just to sate his curiosity, that familiar wavering mirage visible if he squinted and focused enough. Would he see branches and tentacles wrapped around Pia’s limbs? Would he see feathers and white ribbons tied to Pia? Would he see nothing at all?

He swallowed down his desire to know.

He didn’t know how that would go, or how much it might affect Pia. He’d rather have Sleep harm him than someone else. He was meant to hold the god, after all. He was a vessel.

Pia’s exposed mouth twisted in discomfort for a breath before it relaxed and Pia’s body danced once again.

“You run cold, my Fourth. But you are warm now. Is that why you layer up?” Sleep asked, gently tapping on one side of IV’s golden cheekbones. The god then turned Her attention to the other priest, taking one of his hands and rubbing some of his fingers. “I adore the offering of apples, Fore. You know I enjoy them. They have a certain crunch that only teeth against the flesh of the fruit can achieve.”

“What the ever-loving fuck is going on?” III muttered, twisting a golden chain around one of his fingers. His eyes glowed in the dark of his orbital spaces, flickering from Sleep’s priests and his bandmates. “Just when I thought that Sleep couldn’t get weirder, She pulls this shit on us.”

“Patience, my Third. All would have been reveled in time.” Sleep raised a hand to Her mouth and quietly giggled (Vessel didn’t know that Sleep could giggle). “You were not ready yet to know about them. Nor are you ready to know about the alternative ways this might have gone.”

“Sleep, could you save the alternative universes talk for another day?” II asked, rubbing the surface of his cup of tea with his fingers. The long chains of his golden adornments twisted and tangled, forcing him to place his cup down onto the table to unravel them. “Some of us, namely your own vessels, aren’t ready to be thrown into the loops of ‘what might’ve been’ and ‘what is’ so suddenly.”

There was a long, long pause. The air thickened, smelling of saltwater. The shadows on the wall elongated, twisting and turning. Sleep looked at II, not once blinking. Something hummed beyond human vocal cords and it traveled up Vessel’s spine, latching on to the back of his neck. It settled deep into his lungs, spreading and melting into his bloodstream.

“Is that so?” Sleep asked, Pia’s lips moving ever so slightly out of sync of the god’s voice. “If that is true, then —”

Pia’s body shuddered once more and her eyes cleared.

I WILL LET YOU, AS YOU CALL IT, ‘CATCH UP’ WITH MY PRIESTS. I HAVE ETERNITY, AND I WILL ENSURE YOU WILL HEAR ABOUT IT.

With that, the god disappeared. The room cleared up and Fore let out a heavy sigh. “I thought I had to give another offering. Fuck, okay.” He placed a hand on Pia’s shoulder and let it stay there while she leaned against the countertop.

“I think It’s satisfied,” Pia replied. “She just got excited, that’s all. I could invite the Espera if you really want to do another offering though. Lessen the burden a bit. Plus, you know Sleep adores how they sing.”

Vessel glanced at his bandmates, then Sleep’s priests. The idea of alternative ways of this going… well, he would be lying if it didn’t unsettle him. Would he have know them all in those realities?