#bbytext

(SOLOMON WEEK DAY 7 (DOMESTIC/FESTIVAL), 502 WORDS)

His heart thumps in his chest and he considers sprinting to meet you (you can’t be farther than a few doors down or maybe a flight of stairs) but there’s a way these things are done. What is ritual if not a spell?

CONTENT WARNINGS: very mild spoilers for obm:nb

A*N: title from Nothing Even Matters by Lauryn Hill and D’Angelo, which I would gently recommend playing as you read 💞

He greets the house when he returns like a living thing, a friend that could anticipate him, even though he knows what lies beneath it and what “cocytus” means. The welcome it offers him is warm enough, swallowing him up and holding him in its throat. The foyer is damp, pervaded by a strange, digestive sort of smell that he tolerates as long as he must, which is longer than one might assume. There’s a set of preparations he must undergo before making the transition from house to home, chiefest among them being the shedding of the outside airs and, therefore, his outside clothes. His shoes are unlaced and slipped off, his cape unfastened and pulled from round his shoulders. In an effort to be good and tidy he hangs it on the hook by the door, pushes the shoes under the lacquered bench on which he has set his carrying case. There is no effort made to do so quietly; the cape is shaken out with great panache, the shoes near kicked into place. The case is first tossed aside and then sheepishly put to rights. He has begun to feel like a moth who has heard the lighting of a distant lamp, hopeful and fluttering. Any moment now, any moment—

“Solomon?”

It is he and he says as much. His heart thumps in his chest and he considers sprinting to meet you (you can’t be farther than a few doors down or maybe a flight of stairs) but there’s a way these things are done. What is ritual if not a spell?

“Hold on, I’m coming.”

What had felt like a great distance has been rendered down to nothing. He’ll meet you at the end of the hallway, at the entrance of the home, which requires no greeting from him because it is something of his own making and has nothing to do with Cocytus Hall or the Devildom or Nightbringer or anything else. The closer he gets, the more he is overcome by a profound sense of calm. Memories of the day’s events begin to stretch and dilute, fading into a haze of comings and goings and meaningless rumination to be recalled strictly at your behest. He does not need to be wise nor witty here; he can simply be Solomon, whatever that happens to mean.

“Hi, my baby,” you say, as the door swings open and light floods out like a golden river, “welcome home.”

At last. Whatever remained of the day and its effects is flaked off him. Here you are, effulgent and sweet-smelling, to take him in your arms and squeeze him. Your hand comes to cup the back of his neck, your soft cheek pressed to his. He surrenders to your embrace entirely, in which he is made new, and his reward is the gentlest kiss (his mouth, his cheek, his eyelid, the base of his ear, his mouth again).

[SOLOMON WEEK DAY 2 (EXPERIMENT/MENTOR), 605 WORDS]

CONTENT WARNINGS: mild violence, references to death

A*N: title from Tongo Eisen-Martin's "In These Swamps, a Common Name".

The manuscript is titled: “The Poetry of Death” and is handwritten in gaudy red ink. 

“Hm,” Solomon says. “Interesting.” 

Thirteen huffs a hot breath, tickling the downy hairs at the nape of his neck. “What do you mean interesting? That’s just the title! You haven’t even read any of the poetry.”

A fair point. He lifts off the title sheet and gently sets it aside, turns his attention to the opening stanza. 

Death is hot

Sizzling bones and cracking skulls

Death is cold

Last breaths, cooling skin

Death is loud

BANG! A human gun

Death is quiet

Suffocating  

Death is quick

Decapitation, aneurysm

Death is slow

Drowning, torture

Death is many things

Death is everything

Death is nothing

“Do you have much experience with poetry?”

Thirteen comes to perch on the edge of his worktable, crosses her arms. “What do you mean?” 

“Do you read it often?” he clarifies. Thirteen shrugs. 

“Yeah. Occasionally.”

She’s not following. Solomon allows himself a small sigh, a rueful smile. “Sorry, I know that was a bit vague. I suppose I’m asking because I was curious if you were familiar with the conventions of the genre.”

Thirteen sucks her teeth and rolls her eyes. “Who cares! I thought poetry was about expressing your emotions, not recreating old formulas.

“What do you know, anyways?” she adds, accusatory, “you don’t even write poetry.” 

Not that she has ever read, no, but to say he has never written poetry would be untrue. 

“You asked for my opinion,” he reminds her and she kicks him in the shin. 

“And you haven’t even given it! Go on, read the next one.” 

He does. 

Everything bleeds: trees, birds, fish, beetles.

Everything breaks: bridges, arms, mountains, riverbanks.

Everything decays: houses, humans, vegetation, forest creatures 

Everything alive dies in some way. 

“That’s true,” he says and Thirteen groans, loud and long. 

“‘That’s true’ is not an opinion!” she insists, slamming her hand down onto the stack of pages, “I want to know what you think, not useless acquiescence!” 

An ominous creaking from the worktable interrupts his opening mouth. “Be careful,” he says, and then “why?”

Thirteen eases herself off the table and takes a cross-legged seat in the air. “Because you’re a writer and I’m not. You’re familiar with the conventions of the genre, I’m just experimenting.” 

Solomon looks down to the manuscript, gazes idly at a scratched-out misspelling a few lines into the poem. “Then it doesn’t really matter what I think, does it? If you’re just trying your hand at it.”

“What you think rarely matters,” Thirteen says bluntly, “but I’m asking you anyway.

The look on his face must be fond for her to grimace at him so intensely. “It doesn’t have to be some grand critique,” she mumbles, “a few pointers would be just fine. And you better have at least one compliment or else I’m making nicks in your candle!” 

His lone candle, burning lo these many centuries and never diminishing. He’d stuck his finger in the wax once, passing it through the flame, and she had cursed him and spit at him, eyes wild, hair electric, medusa-like. 

“I like,” he begins, “that you can very easily tell it was you who wrote them. The poems, I mean.”

She’s pleased by this, though she’ll try her best not to let on. “Good. What else?”

“I’m just not sure you’ve found your rhythm,” he says after a moment of consideration. 

[SOLOMON WEEK DAY 1 (CHILDHOOD/RAIN), 579 WORDS]

CONTENT WARNINGS: mild spoilers for obm:nb

A*N: set in the context of the "i kid you not" event circa 09-2021

“I forget,” says Barbatos, “how nervous you were as a child.”

Outside, the rain comes down in sheets. Inside, it is relegated to bare white noise. Purgatory Hall is insulating in ways that most places in the Devildom are not.

“Was I?”

To most, the look on Solomon’s face would seem guileless. Barbatos sets his teacup down so delicately it makes no sound. “Sensitive, too.”

A little laugh. Solomon’s lips twist, twitch upwards. 

“If you say so.”

There is a booming rumble of thunder; tiny purple capillaries of lightning ripple across the sky. A flash of smell–burning hair, something metallic–and then it’s gone. A floor above, Simeon is surely petting the fine, tawny hair behind Luke’s ears, a smoking stick of lavender incense set near the head of the bed. 

“Do you remember it differently?”

He would lie and say he does not remember it much at all if he felt he could get away with it. Even the best human memories are short and faulty. Alas, his only fails him when he needs, not when he wants. 

“I remember how it smelled,” he says without meaning to. ‘It’ being many things: the residue an act of raw magic leaves on your hands (ozone, hot metal, scorched rubber), the dry and peppery atmosphere of the Devildom before Diavolo assumed his father’s seat (strong enough, on some mornings, to tickle your throat and make your eyes water), the warm, moist brick of a cellar ceiling after a summer rain he could hear but never see. 

He shakes this thought out of his head. For this sudden burst of nostalgia, he will blame the forbidden book which he should never have brought into the House of Lamentation and yet did so at the cost of his dignity and peace of mind. 

“Sorry,” he says, “what a peculiar thing to say.”

Another flash of lightning and the acrid smell that follows in its wake. Soon, one stick of incense will no longer be enough and Simeon will light a fistful–santal, jasmine, hinoki, vetiver. It will not be the same as the holy angels’ breath incense Luke is used to but it will be enough. Or, he will convince himself it is enough, let the rhythmic stroking of Simeon’s thumb tame his doubting thoughts. Not the same, but enough. I want to see the rain, mama but he is gathered into her breast and told no–no, Solomon–hearing is enough. 

Perhaps it is. The first rain he had seen had been funereal and flooding, waking a sharp, rotting smell up out of the earth and soaking him through to the skin. The damp would not come out of him for days after, the smell of mildew in his hair, his clothes. 

“Solomon,” says Barbatos, ”your tea has gone cold.”

So it has. He could warm it easily himself but Barbatos has done it for him, unfurled his thoughtless fist and nestled the glass into his cupped palms. Milky-white osmanthus flowers float at the surface, fleshy and sweet smelling. 

“Do you remember giving me osmanthus wine?”

Barbatos tilts his head, then nods. “At the fountain of knowledge. Yes, I do.”

It was a fragrance much heavier than the tea, ripe and indolic. He’d had cupful after cupful and fallen asleep in a daze. “My mother told me they grow it on the moon,” he had mumbled to a Barbatos that seemed not much different than he is now.