#fl.tsl

It's strange to hear the familiar way it pops the latch to your window from outside of it, but cool London gives way to the familiar smell of your home. You are placed, carefully, on the floor.

"Szopelosz k”ïkhat xïkh..."

There's something in its voice you haven't heard before. It hastily presses something to the worst of your wounds, trying to stop the bleeding.

"Tlo`tï`... tlo`tï` ma..."

Something cold on your cheek. Tears. Not your own. You can hear its heart beating.

"Come on... stay with me... I've got you..."

Do guardian angels cry?

As it lays you against the hard floor of your room, you become paler and paler. The wounds are something inflicted — that much is obvious. The cuts are angled strangely, in a manner that suggests they are not inflicted by the body’s owner. It seems a client had been a little too rough with the man.

Or was it a client at all?

God only knows what you had been doing in Wilmot’s End. Perhaps the gaze from the junior diplomat was not as lascivious as you expected — maybe that lasciviousness was hunger of a different nature. Hunger of a violent nature. The scent of frankincense fills the room — the window leads into a front room that seems to have been converted to an area of prayer. You are lying right next to the altar and think only to do one thing. With shaking, bloodied hands, you clasp them together. Teary, hazy eyes turn to the crucifix.

“Please, Saint Peter… please…”

You turn your eyes to it, coughing slightly. You seem not to realise, in this delirious state of panic, that death is always impermanent, and that Saint Peter has been put out of a job in the Neath for years.

"Shh... no. Look at me."

The Sixfinger’d Scrimshander has seen that you are suffering from Nightmares, and wishes to assist.

It turns your face to its own. Its eye is wide, expression somewhere in the realm of fury... but it's not for you.

No, no. Not for you.

"You're going to live. Look at me. You're going to be okay."

It brushes the bloody tears from your cheek with its thumb. Its voice is as gentle as falling ash.

"I need you to breathe. Focus. Focus on me. Don't look at your blood, don't look at your god. Don't take your eyes off me. Breathe, Edison."

Its voice breaks. Its eye is silver, like a tear-stained moon. Have you ever seen the moon, Edison?

"I've got you."

Moving your clasped hands, you are now clutching its own in a vice grip. You are shaking — more than when you were ill with mania. But you seem not to be as hurt as you are afraid. Looking at it with wide, almost mortified eyes, you let your head tip back against the floor, breathing heavily. In this angle, your eyelids fall nearly closed in the manner in which you are looking at it. The beginnings of sentences come out fragmented.

“I wasn’t… I— I didn’t… he just… stabbed so quickly…”

You choke a little, coughing through the agony again. Your hands grip it tighter.

“He was… trying to… I did not foresee… him having…”

You suck in a strained breath through your teeth.

“It hurts— it’s hurting me— I can’t— it’s hurting…”

Your glittering eyes meet the Scrimshander's again. Tears and sweat have drenched your face. You are baptised in your own agony.

“Please, let me pray… let me pray, Logan. I want… I want to go to Heaven. I want God— I want God to forgive me, please.”

Your eyes clamp shut, squeezing more tears out. If you can grip it any tighter, you do.

“I want to be good enough. I— I’m… trying to be… trying to be good enough… please… let me repent, please. I need… to be good enough.”

In delirium from the pain, you laugh, eyes rolling back to stare up at the altar.

“Who… am I kidding, Logan? Certain… certainly not you. I am… going to Hell. There is no… no place for me in… God’s kingdom.”

What you See:

Its hands move to cup your face, its expression one of grief and a fury you've never seen on the face of anything mortal. Its long, sharp teeth are bared and hungry as its mouth moves, words spilling past them rapidly. Its hands pull back, and it practically tears your bodice free, undoes your bloodsoaked shirt. Its hands find your wounds, and it presses its fingers into your flesh. For the first time, since it carried you home, its eye closes.

Beneath its eyepatch, something begins to give off incredible light.

The light spreads, first, to the whorling scars on the left side of its face, like threads of gold forming a lattice of filigree. The light spreads, illuminating its skull and teeth, and the lichtenberg figure that splits its form, crackling down both arms. Its bones begin to get brighter, and you see the spiral of its ribs through its shirt, the interlacing lattice of veins, the pulsing of its hearts in a harrowing canter. Its face is now so bright it is hard to keep your eyes on it. Its bones glow like a sun, trying to erupt from its skin.

Yours do, too.

When the glow recedes, it collapses beside you, rolling to one side, gasping. A trickle of black runa from its nose, and the space behind its ear where it breathes.

Your body is whole, wounds healed, as though they had never been.

What you Feel:

Warmth, cradling your face. Gentle fingers against your temple, pushing sweat-slick hair from your forehead. Cold tears, but only on your right cheek. The hands recede, and the world is suddenly cold, as your flayed body is bared. Those same gentle hands find your deepest wounds and the pain is sharp and sudden, it is difficult to even breathe.

It is nothing compared to what follows.

The hands on you begin to heat up, and every fibre of your being responds as though you have been electrified. The current of agony you felt before is a gentle embrace compared to this. If you are screaming, you cannot hear it. The fires of Hell would be a pleasant and comfortable warmth. The gilded rot pours through your synapses, the sodium channels of your nerves, and you feel your flesh reaching for itself. The pain of weeks of healing concentrated to this instant.

And then? The pain is gone.

Gone as if it had never been. You hardly even remember it. There are other pains, of course, but they feel almost trivial now.

You feel a hand in yours.

What you Hear:

There is a sob, and a growl.

"No, Edison. Look at me. Don't give up now, please. I can't lose anyone else. I never should have touched you, now you're going t—"

A hiss of frustration, strangled by tears.

"Edison, I will never stop you from praying. Pray all you want, but understand. Please understand. You are perfect. There is nothing you could do that would make you unworthy to exist. You are enough. You change this place with your words, your hands, your laugh. If there's no room for that in your God's kingdom, there's room for it in mine. I'm sorry."

There is a horrible sound like thunder, that shakes you to your bones. Sick cracking and a radio static whine. The Scrimshander gasps, like it's been struck, deep and hollow. There is something else, older than any god. The sound of something gentle, and loving.

An ending, but a peaceful one.

When your ears stop ringing, you focus on the sound of Lok'a`wï`, gasping beside you. How do you know the name of the Keeper of the Question? No time to think about that. It sniffs. Its voice is a threadbare whisper, hoarse and honest.

"I love you, Edison Hollingsworth. I just... wish you could love yourself."

The Sixfinger’d Scrimshander has admitted their admiration for you.

Are you willing to deepen your relationship?

Once it falls to its side, you all but shoot up, gasping for air and clutching at your chest. You tremble, still, though not out of agony. Your hand is desperately gripping onto Logan's in the manner that you might shatter the bones in it.

“A miracle?”

Your voice comes out in the softest whisper. Finding yourself able to stand, you pull yourself from the bloodied floor and stare at the altar in front of you, with something of a mortified expression. At a moment’s notice, you take a framed picture of the Lord, drop it onto the floor, and shatter the glass beneath your red-stained shoe. By the time you are finished with this episode of change, the altar is ruined.

“There is no God in Heaven.”

You announce your revelation to yourself, then drop to your knees, over it, watching its exhausted expression. Your hand comes to wipe the trickling black from under its nose, while another links with the hand that had held yours before.

“It is here on Earth with me.”

With haste, you lean down and press your lips to its own, and it is something more chaste and pure and holy than the million kisses you have forced yourself to bestow to others.

There is something real behind the way you kiss the Sixfinger'd Scrimshander.

You have taken the Sixfinger'd Scrimshander into your arms. You appreciate its admission of affection!

Seen with The Sixfinger'd Scrimshander (1)