Ashes to Ashes Pt. 02

My assessment of Ike's condition was correct. A brisk walk and a sated throat and a full belly have done wonders for his constitution. Still whip thin, but that's more his natural disposition it seems. And I have to admit, there are certain advantages to that lifestyle. The wind of needle sand that worms through lenses and slips under cloth doesn't seem to be that much trouble for him. It just flows around him, his body a knife to cut the current and let the rock behind him stand stalwart and strong.

He's wearing my spare equipment and he wears it well. Didn't have to help at all, other than a slow prod to get his mind working, understanding what I threw to him when I saw the first clouds of dust pour up from the horizon. At that mention, his face went deliciously wide and every part of him that could be was covered and cinched. There would still be scrapes and cuts. Those would always be there. A handful of grit has found my elbow and if it doesn't blister, it will certainly turn raw by the time the wind dies down.

We move to stay still. Any actual progress we could gain would undoubtably be in the wrong direction wind and needle knives spinning as topsy turvy until we walk off into the sky, so disoriented that we fall up. If we don't take the steps, then the wind pushes us all over, taking us up into the endless void anyway. So, the march. The march against the grit, the needles, the jagged edges that bite and slice and burn. Ike walks in front of me, shoulders hunched and head kept down each step a practiced shuffle off into the faceless maw of gale and storm.

I fight the desire to open my arms and laugh. But that would let more of the other sand down my throat. I smile, thought. I keep everything wide and open. The loyal tatters of my jacket whip and strike against my back, barked slaps of tanned leather. It hurts. It hurts just as the slice and the needle of the supersonic sand does and I want to laugh. It's not enough. It lacks and leaves me wanting. Failure, abject failure, absolute failure of the world to stop me and the death march across the dunes.

It fails. The world fails in its ceaseless rage. Impotent, simply impotent and ineffective, worthless hurricane typhoon apocalypse slipping into my thought, keeping it all in chaos. I keep marching, up the dunes, sliding down, stumbling, sure, but from my own overeager body to endure. Ike does not stumble. Surgical evisceration taking apart the world in calm steps, measured calculations side stepping brutal natural anarchy.

The chill hums and probes the flesh, knocking up the gaps so the gaps so the whole structure does not fall. It does snap and nip at the wind, the bits too close. But it knows, understands the purpose of the march. The legs keep moving, head down just a bit but not bowed. It all keeps momentum forward.

It snaps and breaks into the storm clouds, blinding blue-white arc to the heavens before quieting down back to its cage. Ike turns back and for a brief glorious moment, I feel the storm hit me full force. Glorious rage, condensed and manifested in wind and blade. Furious tantrum anger. Ike turns back to cutting the wind for me so I don't catch flight. Such a gentleman.

He stops and I collide with him. Not my fault. I trust the world to continue on as it should but apparently, he does not. Through the ceaseless haze, he points to an indistinct fuzz several dunes over. Blurred shapes, too narrow, too shallow for a dune. But I see it and nod. He nods, just to confirm my nod. And once more, we venture forth into the jaws of disaster.

Always such a thrilling sensation to bleed chilled spiking arcs. First, is always the pain, the sharp, the cut. Invigorating, immersed in a grand vortex of ice helps the senses collect. It does tend to distract and disorient in greater concentrations. In small doses, like the draw of metal across a whetstone, it sharpens and refines.

Beneath that is the heat, that competition sense against the chill. Pure blood, carrying no current, wells and beads and slips away, carried by the open air into nothing. The skin and the cloth trap it for the briefest of moments before freedom. That is what I feel that bit of confinement, the self-locked behind chain and cage, liquid and effluvial escape inevitable but sluggish and restrained.

All of it, the pain, the warmth, the pressure, and scratch bone bending and muscle clenching beneath the filter of thought is the rolling chill. It is not what I say it is. It is not a formed thing speaking to me of unleashed destruction, chaos anarchy birthed into the world through unlocked will. It is not even a thing, a bit of tangible reality, an organ tucked away and behind a battery charged past capacity. It is not. It simply is. It is and whatever word comes next is wrong. I say it is pain, but that it's the body controlling the release of it. The rapturous containment and trickle of beyond.

It just is.

I house it sometimes. I do my best to sate it, appease the endless appetite, soothe the gnawing hunger I think it calls out as. But it wants nothing because it is nothing at the basest level. It is within me, poking through me, but doing nothing of the sort. It is sideways from me, something beyond my thought, my interactions with the world, my interpretations, my understanding. It does as it wishes, from my point of view, but it may not even wish at all. It is.

I smile as it bubbles and burbles through the warm blood weeping into the sand-stained fabric, poking and prodding, slipping between the lines it takes as it pleases. I watch the dance in the gaps, the playful jumps of innocent exploration, a place it knows well by now. The tattered jacket, threadbare strips that are at least somewhat new. A playground struck by hurricane earthquakes but a set it knows. New gaps, new stretches, but that is just space to mold and shape for itself. It already has my blood and flesh. That belongs to the shell, the thing that I call the presence. Even my mind has so much wonderful rapture writhed from its fold when the chill so desired. Puppet and puppeteer blended together, locked and intertwined.

Ike stops again and I slam into his back. His fault, not mine. I apparently have the insane notion that people should keep on walking in the hellscape we find ourselves in, just so we eventually, hopefully, impossibly, get out of it and go to a place that does not entertain such notions of terrible sandstorms. But I'm the dumb one.

Like a gentleman, he was waiting for me and enduring glorious agony when shelter beckons not a handful of steps away. He is the dumb one, though. Rock and stone make for a better roof than wind and sand, but he insists on staying put and singing the praises of chivalry. I retract my initial dismissal of my intelligence as I peer into the rock.

A cave, but mostly man made, chiles and carved into smooth lines. Odd, but not worth stopping for. What does makes sense of the halt, is the dozen or so people huddled together inside, each one with a chest of layered and lacquered wood in their vicinity. And they are all watching us, eyeing us, hands to knives, the less than fit in the back. Save one, I realize. That specimen points a rifle right between my eyes, so dutifully trained.

Ike puts his hands up and I do the same. I wonder if there are bullets for the gun. I doubt it, but the threat is enough to stay my hand for the moment. Bullets are a pain to remove, tend to splinter and fragment. I swear, bits keep turning up a year or so after. I might even still have some in there, mixing with the blood, passing along the chill current.

My arms grow sore as they linger, held and still. Some masks and lenses turn to the others and I focus on the rifle. What little glimpses of skin I see is tanned and scarred, beaten leather rough, courser than the sand whipping at my back. The chill behaves, for the most part. It still bites and stings with the gaps in my skin, hidden and unseen.

A wave travels through the dozen or so gathered. It's hard to ever recognize them as human or anything close to it. They might not be. Some other slinking slithering things of rock scales that figured out how to stitch and patch the broken things of the sand.

"Friends?" asks the one with the gun.

"Friends," says Ike. He bows his head and I do the same.

"The desert does not discriminate. But we shall. No harm to us, then no harm to you."

Ike nods and leads me to a side as far away as we can get from the group. They still watch us, watch us collapse and shift and settle. I stop watching them after a bit. I'm much more interested in the piles of sand forming at the lip of the cave. Hypnotic really, the rise and fall of endless sand. A mountain to stand the test of time and the elements, only to fail and crumble to dust at the whim of fate.

Ike stays close to me, almost latched to the hip. The gathered masks of hard leather keep watching. We are unknown and thus a threat. They fall into the same category as us if they could actually be effective. As painful as a bullet is, the storm possesses a greater threat overall. Weathered countless times with broken skin and shredded flesh.

"Names," says the man who has set the rifle down.

"Ike," my companion says. "From Fingertree Fort. Had a run in with some slythers and-"

"Jill," I say with a hand to poke and stop the words.

"Slythers," the rifleman continues. I hide a grimace.

"Do not offer more than is asked," I whisper to the poor boy.

"Young ones," I say to the collective, "Wandered from the hive. They were harassing him, but they ran off when the storm hit. Found him shortly before that. We were lucky they weren't full grown. I heard there are some ruins around here, back west. Might be their nest."

Two more masks turn to the rifleman. Between the wind and the cloth, I can't make out the words. They nod and continue the report and our favorite finally breaks eye contact. He joins the hushed voices.

"Don't tell them what I am," I whisper, "Fingertree threw you out, right? There could be a nice reward for the both of us all brought in nice and neat."

He nods, still rattled, and a gun did not help his nerves. Names are fine. Those can change at the drop of a hat. The thing behind the name is a little more set, a little more brittle.

"Fingertree," he says, "We're trying to get to Fingertree."

And it slips, something slips in my thoughts and I almost want to burst out laughing. The tension, the chill, I feel bubbling and consuming slowing as stalls at those words from him. The stiffened leather masks soften. The eyes and the mouths and all the hard creases of beaten skin break and melt. A subtle thing really. If it wasn't for my own current pulsing, I doubt I'd pick up on it.

"Soren," says the rifleman.

"And who are your companions?" Ike asks.

"We are all Soren. And we are all headed to Fingertree. Our treasury is full and it wishes to be full of something else.

I shift and scooch closer to him. It's nice to be close to him, to feel his body on mine, even if it is through threads.

He looks so far away thought, away from the moment of invisible wave slicing through the collective Soren. Despite the mask, there is very little in common between them. The stature, the build, the small tics and bobs that pass for stillness in humanity. The sand keeps shifting and moving, still pulling my attention away. Such a mesmerizing thing, the rise and fall and shift. I swear they make faces, mean snarling things that growl and sneer. They keep moving closer and closer.

The wave from me startles Ike and the tune hums with the string on the world. Just as the sense tears through him, his web shimmers all the same. Just as they all went slack before now, they go stiff and rigid, hands to weapons, rifle to me, and the chill once again rises, returning with slick dagger sharp teeth.

Soren, the gun Soren, says something to me, but I don't listen. He can shoot me if he wants, and that's probably what I deserve. But I am helping him, all of them, even if they don't know it. I kick aside the nonsense shapes of grains, planting my palms into the earth. The satisfaction I have of being right fails to alleviate the glorious panic rising in my chest.

"Jill," Ike says, voice trying to be even, "Jill, what's going on?"

"Shut up," I hiss, "And stay still. All of you."

That doesn't work in the way I hoped it would. The collective Soren gets to their collective feet, weapons drawn. Ike keeps the space behind through shifting, moving, trying to lock the minds in place. He's also doing it to me and I wish he wouldn't. It's not helping but yelling at him and watching the adorable natal sorrow cross his brow wouldn't help me either. Probably just make everything worse.

My hands hit something soft and spongy once my elbows hit the sand. The wind licks with its razor tongue along my face. My mask shifted and I tase the bitter ash, grit slowly working its way down my throat. Bitter, sucking, taking my lips and cracking them like parched earth. The grit scrapes across my forehead and I feel the skin break and scratch.

The chill finally decides on its limit, surging in me, breaking apart the gummed muscles, cracking them through the sand, the grains, the light comes from my vessel and veins. It answers the wind's howl with snaps and cracks, dead tress falling, mountain ice melt, bones bending and twisting until finally, rapturously, it all breaks down into dust.

I'm laughing. I think I'm laughing. I hope I'm laughing. The lips and the chest are heaving and jumping like I am laughing, but I don't know if it's me that's doing it. The gathered panic feedback filtered and muted the slipping control of my body and, wondrously, Ike's rising desire, all slam into me through a thin web of unseen sensations. And my body is laughing, heaving guttural hiccups that pierce my sides. Lightning in my veins, sharp daggers piecing my skin, howling maelstrom, the world collapses on the edge of a woman descending into hell.

The lust he feels to my hunched back honestly surprises me. The intensity of it as it sidles and hums through my mind, finding paths the chill took and claiming them in its own storied conquest. While just as invasion, it isn't quite as hostile. A tourist of my body, meandering through marrow, weight and pressure, just a bit too bulky for the streets and alleys. It bumps into the walls, slowly squeezing the path wider and the chill works with it. It takes the wider paths with white rapid intent, blasting stone and mortar to smithereens.

It builds in the pals and the scathing, scouring light. The sand starts to buckle and melt and flow around my hands. Burning and freezing, skin charred and earth molten, sand turning to dark murky glass, scattering the charge ever downward. The collective Soren is yelling at me, yelling at Ike. A shot blurs past my hair, scattering it to the wild storm. The chill bites at it in passing. They have the picture of what I am and no more shots come forth.

That wide weight of feigned calm finally breaks to genuine fear and terror immersing us all in a terrible feeding loop. The ground tremors and quakes, light burning through me. Every ounce of the self that is me, that is laughing so hard it hurts, breaks.

The chill takes over hammering into the cracked lip again and again and again and again., through my veins, my skin, my blood, my soul, all in time with my heartbeat.

From the back of the cave comes the rattle, the command, the air turning over in on itself. Folding and unfolding, twisting and untwisting, the earth rattles and shakes, glass fusing to flesh and the world is screaming.

It's at least a dozen heartbeats in the lip and the chill scatters down the cave. I lose track of it bast the Soren with the rifle, but it is still there, still careening and spreading, scraping the poor tunnel raw and bloody. It screams at me one final time before collapsing. The roof above us goes slack as I stand.

"Move," I yell. My hands go up, catching the upper lip. Ike does not. The collective Sore does. They all weigh that silent equation of threat. And I am deemed lesser as they all start to file past me, back into the storm. The chill floods my frame.

Ike leaves last, placing a single hand between my shoulders. The chill snaps at him, playfully, even now, I sense his wide vacant hunger, the chill already prepared to fill the gap, widen it and be widened in turn, the half turned whole. Later, we will do it later once my muscles soften and my bones cease tearing.

One final push, the chill scatters up into a massive skull, arching through bone and into skull. Ike pulls me free, tumbling back out into the grit blades tearing at my flesh. He helps me back up, the current jumping back and forth in the endless play.

The collective Soren look to us, bodies stacked against the wind. Their eyes are on us, but the gun isn't. Wordlessly, they turn into the storm. Just as silently, we follow. One last time, I look behind me. A vacant eye flooded crimson and black, stares at me but does not see me, before the sand swallows it whole.

---

The collective Soren was silent. The collective Soren is silent. I imagine that the collective Soren will remain silent for the foreseeable future. Even now, with dreadfully clear skies above us, a harsh cruel sun suspended and mocking, they have their quiet ways and solemn march.

And to be fair, Ike and I do not say much of anything either. Much too hot for idle conversation. Still, I can feel the waves emanating from him, the gap behind the mind. Tired, somewhat frustrated, tinges of fear, and the still whining need directed at the way my back moves as I walk. Odd, since I have shifted to walk behind him to look at his back as he walks. Lithe muscles, sweat running down the lines, the glimpses of dark against the sand and the shift of skin. I don't know if the others have picked up on my blatant ogling, as they all have kept their eyes down. The occasional glance back up to confirm the terrain, but an all-around silent march. At least the wind and the storm were something interesting.

I lose count of the steps. Not the stumbles, though, and the sixth time I do so, there is a breeze of cool relief carried in the concern from Ike. I'll have to talk to him about all that at some point. An easy distraction in the making and I'd prefer it if I felt what I was supposed to feel within and nothing more than that. But he comes to me and helps me back to some level of stable before pointing to the sky.

It's the spire. He sees the spire and his hands find the gaps between my shoulder blades again as he points. Dead, it's a dead thing, a bent and cracked tree, splintering off into dozens and dozens of small grasping hands. Needle fingers clawing at the sky, rending and parting the blazing light and making it weep crimson.

I'm more thankful for the canyon and the rocks offering shade by the barrel, spilling it on the ground with reckless abandon. It should be rationed, for come midday, it will be scarce and scattered. I can't even imagine the wars fought over such precious land. Kings and queens, regiments filled with the noble and just, locked in bloody combat for a spot to avoid the whither. I have now stumbled 7 times. I refuse Ike's hand. He is too eager, too simply happy, to feel anything other than that. Must be nice to come home.

For all the welled-up energy, he does not sprint, does not take off running down the dunes trying to break his neck in some desperate attempt to get from here to there. Measured calm steps suffocate that joy in the crib, leaving him stoic. I watch the wave travel up through him, watch the stance move and halt before faltering. He takes a deep, deep breath that I imagine carries the scent of home.

It's another handful of hours before the sand becomes rock and the dune valley becomes full canyon. Another handful of hours until the gold gray fades into deep rage red. Slowly, my mask comes down and I can breathe again. The air still singes my lips, my throat, my lungs. Even I the shade, I leave the black lenses on. Still bright enough to scorch the back of my skull with a mote of carelessness. The jacket finally does settle back down to a spider web mass along my back, hanging from my shoulders, thumping in time with my steps. Ike sheds the few extraneous layers and bits that cover him. His arms, tight rope knot cords intertwined, are going to turn red in a matter of moments. That is what always happens with my pale at least. His tanned and dark cords might fare a bit better against the worst of it.