6A: On Cars, Ashgabat, and Women

A perfectly normal car pulled up outside a perfectly normal house, that sat at the end of a perfectly normal driveway, off a perfectly normal road, in a perfectly normal city. I have, of course, already explained ‘cities’, ‘roads’, and ‘houses’ to you once before. A ‘car’, however, is much like a small ‘ship’, which I also have described. The main point of difference between the two is that while ‘ships’ are built to mostly float on top of the large swathes of oxidane that coat the exterior of this planet, a ‘car’ is instead placed upon those ‘roads’ I mentioned, and it doesn’t typically do a good job of floating at all. It is, however, propelled along said ‘roads’ by an internal combustion engine, or even more archaically, an electric motor. It is yet another eccentricity of these beings that they discovered the former before the latter. They now are in the midst of a revolution towards replacing all of these ‘cars’, and indeed other modes of transport, with electric varietals, blissfully ignorant to the fact that there is a small child in the middle of one of their cities nominally referred to as Ashgabat, who has discovered a new fuel source derived from the flatulence of the Transcapian saw-scaled viper which, as you know, as identical in chemical composition to the fuel used by our interdimensional, dare I say, ‘ships’. Were the populace of this planet mindful enough of this discovery, they would quickly be able to adapt their existing technologies and advance their civilisation considerably. Of course they choose to do the exact opposite, and doom themselves to a millennia of misfortune. This is a fair reflection of why the subject is so interesting. In her, I see the chance for them to change. Outside of that perfectly normal ‘house’, a woman opens up the door. ‘Woman’, being the singular term for the member of their species tasked with partirution, as they have not yet grown beyond the need for such a division. Some creatures in those masses of planetary oxidane are closer in their evolution towards the hermaphroditic synchronicity needed to populate The Universe, but sillily, those species forgot to evolve opposable thumbs. It’s like everything on this planet is doing things deliberately wrong. That ‘woman’ goes inside the ‘house’. The subject goes with her.

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6B: Perfectly Normal

“Tea?” the woman asks, as soon as we enter the house. A fleeting memory of that word taps away in the back of my mind, like a dream that doesn’t want to be remembered.

“Thank you,” I say anyway, in Korean. I allow whatever it was that tried to get in to pass me by.

For her part, the girl isn’t interested in tea. That feels different, but it makes sense. She’s still young, after all.

The woman gets to work, preparing the leaves and boiling some water in the kitchen. She leaves us to our own devices, and the girl clings to my chest as I carry her into what appears to be the living room. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it looks much the same as a living room would in any of the other countries that I remember going to. A television; a couch; a coffee table. Those are more or less the key amenities, as they would be anywhere else. Shelves and cabinets dot the edge of the room, and a photo framed in an ornately carved red pine draws my eye.

I set the girl on the ground and allow her space to wander. A scour of the room doesn’t turn up any potential hazards that her curiosity might uncover, but if I’ve learned anything over the last two weeks it's that she has a unique way of turning up things that were never even there. I’ve mused on this phrase once before, but it boils up once again from that fucking motif library that’s stashed away in my brain somewhere: like father, like daughter.

As I approach the picture, I make sure to keep the girl in my sights. She plods her way around the room, before taking great interest in a glass bowl full of shiny black rocks that sits as a centrepiece on the coffee table. The library doesn’t turn up anything on that, so I get a chance to split my attention.

Atop a mountain, overseeing a lush green vista, two smiling women beam right through the photo, and into my heart.

It’s the woman whose house we’re in. The one we met under the great camphor after our journey with the North Korean War Criminal.

In the photo, she drapes her arm over the shoulder of another woman, who shares a remarkable physical resemblance.

Her sister.

The girl’s mother.

“Here you go,” the woman says, as she enters the room. In her hands are two pale blue mugs with steam rising from them. She hands one to me, and I take it with my gloved hand, wrapping my fingers tight around it in spite of the boiling tea within. Even with that layer of protection, a normal person would still feel the heat through the fabric.

Me though? You could shoot a crimson blast of mystical shitfuckery at that hand, and it wouldn’t register a thing. Nothing can damage it.

Not anymore.

“Thank you,” I say once again, careful not to burn my lips as I take a miniscule sip and the woman steps up beside me. Forlorn, she looks at her sister’s face.

“She was always the life of the party,” she tells me. I’ll keep doing the translation work for you. “But she never seemed… satisfied. Even after getting married, she had such a thirst for new experiences. It was her idea to go to America, you know? And when she fell pregnant, she was determined to stay. I never even got a chance to meet her daughter.”

“Until now.” We both turn at the same, watching as the girl meticulously counts each small stone that she takes out of the bowl. For all the things that she can do; all of the things that she says she knows, there are still a lot of limitations on her young mind.

There are six-hundred and twenty-three stones in the bowl.

I know this.

The tea is still hot, but has become a little more bearable to the tongue. I risk a bigger sip.

“Let’s sit down,” the girl’s aunt suggests. I follow her over towards the centre of the room and take up a pew on the couch right behind where the girl kneels. The woman lowers herself into a matching armchair, at a slightly obtuse angle from me.

“How long do we have to wait?” I say, without looking. The woman doesn’t look at me, either. We both sit and sip our teas, while watching the girl count rocks. There was something calming about it all. Something perfectly normal. It helped that she knew everything already. I had been open with her. If only others appreciated that as much as she did. I told her how I came to be the girl’s steward, and then I went even further with that. I told her about the other stuff too. About the girl and what we had experienced. What she was capable of. And of course… how everything keeps turning up Alias. She accepted it all with a grace that suggested she wasn’t surprised. Almost like she expected it.

“Not long at all,” she said, sipping from her own tea. “I messaged them when we left, and again when we were about thirty minutes out. They’ll be here soon.”

They.

The girl’s family.

Her real family. Not me.

I’m not real.

The journey had taken about three hours. I don’t know what that said about where NK had taken us, but it had made for a long enough drive to catch the girl’s aunt up on everything. And a long enough drive for a lump to form in my throat.

A real lump, figuratively speaking. Heh.

BZZZZZZZT!

The doorbell rings. I look to the woman with a level of expectation. I’m not alone. From where she leans over the bowl of stones, the girl looks up too.

The woman nods.

This is it.

The girl is about to meet her family.

Together, we all make our way towards the very same front door that we had come through not that long ago. The girl clings to the leg of my jeans, making sure that we don’t get separated.

It’s the woman who opens the door, and the three of us are met with three of them.

“Welcome,” the woman whose house this is, greets them.

On the sight of them, that nagging feeling that danced in the background of my mind returned. There was a vague familiarity about all this. I feel the girl tug tight against my pant leg. Does she feel it too?

In the faces of the three visitors, I see some similarity to the woman. And to the girl. They stand before him as if they’re on display. Like I could walk up to each of them and select which direction I would go. Which path I would choose. It was like I could choose my own adventure.

I guess I can.

I. Not you. Not this time.

From left to right, I scan across their faces.

The first is a woman, younger than the girl’s aunt but still an adult. She has dyed her hair blue and the faint shadow of what may one day grow into an actual moustache sits upon her upper lip. It’s matched by dark black streaks of hair that I observe on her bare arms. She’s hairy. Furry. As I ever do, I look into her eyes. Yesterday’s moon still lingers there, washing the darkness from the brown in her eyes.

“Cousin,” the girl’s aunt tells me, explaining this wild creature’s relationship to the girl. There were other words said as well, as the woman greeted each of these visitors in a perfectly normal way, but at the moment I’m just extracting some of the key information.

Whatever the difference in age between the girl’s aunt and her cousin, the reverse is true between the aunt and the crone that stands second in the line outside the house. Not willing to lose sight of a youth that long since departed, the grey of her hair is washed with red, the combination of which leaves it almost pink. Around her face, particularly on her nose, are a series of blemishes and rises in her skin. Here she is, warts and all, with eyes black and cold.

“My own aunt,” I hear the original woman say, still abridged from her wider dialogue.

Rounding out the line is a male. He isn’t particularly tall, and carries a lot more weight on his torso than would likely be healthy. With the touches of grey speckled throughout his hair, I suspect that he’s about the same age as the girl’s aunt, but the youth in his face throws doubt. Round spectacles hang off his broad nose, bending the light that twinkles in his deceitful eye. He wipes at them, oddly, while they remain on his face. With the distortion of the light and the movement of his hands, it looks as though he closes his eyes. Sideways.

“My brother,” I take, from the woman’s greater introduction.

“Pleased to meet you all,” I bow, ever so slightly.

This is not the first moot that I have attended. I have walked into the hall of the Gods themselves and laid waste to them all. If you’re inclined to believe me, that is. But this is the moot that I attend now. The gathering of a family that I, nor you, know nothing about.

The moot is about to begin.

To decide the fate of the girl.


~~~

And the world.

~~~

I hold the door open as the family members stream in. As she leads the parade through the house, I can tell that the girl’s aunt is giddy. I don’t think she’s had everyone together at once in quite some time. These three, I was told, represent the different branches of the family. The vagueness of that statement hints at something else. It’s clear that I don’t have all of the information.

Perhaps this isn’t perfectly normal after all.

Three guests had arrived, and the girl still remained calm and quiet. I was beginning to get used to this. The aunt told me that there was going to be four, however.

“Comrade Alias!” interjects a voice, just as I’m about to close the door.

Now there are four.

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6C: Failure

Knock knock.
Who’s there?
Lycana.
Lycana, who?
Lycana’s going to become the next Universal Champion
Holy shit, that’s the funniest joke I have ever heard in my life.
Yup.

”Directly contradict this, directly contradict that. Yadda, yadda, fucking yadda.

It’s all a bit rich, you know? Coming from you. Coming from fucking anyone, really. Even me!

But hey, since I keep having to spell shit out for you like you’re a child, let’s mosey on back to what you view to be the most egregious of my failings.

I told everyone it took killing me to beat me, and that obviously was a reference to you. But then…

I told you that you didn’t kill me.

Seems like a pickle for me to twist out of, right?

Is it poor form to answer a question with a question?

Hey Tav’... you ‘stopped’ me, but did you really?

Bish, this is the same fucking conversation. You’ve just abandoned one argument only to paint it up again in different words and now you’re walking around acting like it’s some sort of silver bullet. You uh… you know what gets killed with silver bullets, don’t ya? Looks like I found a use for that fucking shotgun I mentioned!

Guess what? You did kill me. And you didn’t.

That’s the fucking point.

Want to call me a contradiction?

That’s the fucking point!

Oh sure I’ve denied it when you’ve pulled out some of that selective deliberate deafness and plucked shit out of context, ignoring what I said immediately before or after. But in terms of contradictions… is that supposed to be telling me something that I don’t know?

I told you I knew what I said, didn’t I? Or are you ignoring that? Better get back to those archives again, girl, but this time, dig deeper. Don’t just focus on what I’ve said. Branch out and start looking into what I’ve done too. Or what I’ve said I’ve done. Not just in the XWF. In fucking life. Or are we supposed to pretend the rest of it doesn’t matter? Why would we be airing it then, eh?

From the very first time that I was shat out onto the floor of the XWF once again, I set the fucking frame for everything that I’ve been doing. I’ve been telling you how I perceive the world. There is no camera following me around. There’s just me telling stories about what I’ve been doing. Telling you about how The Universe communicates to me.

Are you really trying to tell the guy who talked to a fucking Salmon-Coloured Minotaur that he’s said and done things that are inconsistent with other things that he’s said and done? That he’s… crazy?

I thought you were doing your research?

You’ve over-corrected towards the surface and now you’re also missing all of the metaphors that I’ve absolutely been consistent about mentioning! You need both, Shit-Goth-Bulma! Consistently inconsistent, or inconsistently consistent? Pick your fucking poision.

What does killing someone mean to you, Tav’? What does a phoenix mean? What does me standing here in flesh and fucking blood mean?

Twist. Sidestep. Limbo. Fosbury Flop. A fucking pole vault. Dodge, dip, duck, dive, and dodge. I’ve said that last one before too - did you find that? Have you made the fucking connection yet?

Do you believe that I could have survived that fire? Do you believe that pile of ash that remained within that cage was the last of my remains? Do you believe that I was sent back by the fucking sun, and that my body magically reappeared out of fire?

Did you kill me?

I think you did and I think you didn’t. Right now. Still. Even with you standing there calling me a liar.

You’ve landed on ‘yes’. Cool. That’s the surface. Now ask yourself… was it just a metaphor? Yeah… you’re still refusing to even take a stab at that, aren’t you? It makes you… uncomfortable… to even begin sifting through what’s on the surface and what isn’t. It’s that over-correction. You carried yourself as if you were better than all this, but after everything you said you ‘respected’ about me, you clearly skipped the meat and potatoes. You skipped what it is that makes me, me. And now you’re acting like me controlling my own narrative is something that is either a shocking revelation, or something I’m supposed to be ashamed of. You ‘see’ me? You need to get your eyes checked because all you’re seeing is this picture of me that you’ve created. Swing and a fucking miss, darling. Keep your eye on the fucking ball.

What happened to the whole ‘enigma’ deal, Tavora? Now that you’re not hearing what you want to hear when we speak, are you so willing to cast all of your aspersions about me aside so easily? You’re throwing the baby out with the bath water because you can’t figure out which is fucking which. That’s amateur hour. Such a shame. So focused on proving you’re being honest with me that you ain’t even being honest with yourself. You’re asking me questions but not looking for your own answers.

What if…?

What if I did lie to everyone else, but I’m being truthful to you? Boy, that would sure throw everything off for ya, wouldn’t it? However would you pretend you didn’t LITERALLY ask if I was contradicting myself back at Leap of Faith or now? What, so you already knew the answer? You already knew I owned my failings? What the fuck were you even saying, then? Or were you just looking for something to say for the sake of saying something? Like getting pissy at me even using the word ‘literally’. Fuck, I didn’t even clock that you used that word. It was just a theme, a gag, a motif.

Alias doing Alias things.

But it sure as shit showed your hand, didn’t it? I didn’t even fucking intend for that, but here you are spilling your guts all over the sidewalk for me.

Tavora, you just showed me how you can’t discern the surface truths from the metaphors.

Fuck me, this is a pretty nasty look for you. You’re LITERALLY getting down in the weeds about fucking word usage now. Not a saying, a fucking word! I thought you were above this shit? Jot this down for the future, Tav’: attacking someone with the word ‘narrative’ in a pre-fight exchange is akin to calling someone fucking Hitler in an internet argument.

Dumb. As. Fuck.

We all have our narratives. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t be fucking talking. The problem isn’t in me using your words, or you using mine. It’s the ignoring that you do it too. It’s the ignoring that I fucking own it. It’s the ignoring that you acted like you wouldn’t. That you didn’t intend to from the get go.

But you fucking did it. You’ve owned the action now, but not all that it entails. Not that it was your intent.

Because you’re lying to yourself about who you are. Twist. Turn. Fucking crunch.

And now we’re back at those differences, Tav’. Because if you can’t align your head with your fucking mouth, I’ll do it for you.

I mean, if you don't want to keep repeating yourself, like you’ve lamented so many times already, you could always find something new to say.

But you won't.

Because that’s not who you are.

We both know who I was back at Leap of Faith. You act like you know who I am now, but your exasperation at everything that comes with it clearly shows you don’t.

You’re fucking cooked.

I’ll give you another chance though. I’m going to ask you another question, and I suppose with the way the cards are falling, your last chance to answer will be there in the middle of The Universe, when we are standing face-to-face:

Are you happy?

Heh…

You know what I did there, right?

The carnival should be a happy place. From rollercoasters to merry-go-rounds. Fast or slow. It’s all a blast! Shit, you’re even out here trying to play fucking whack-a-mole too - trying to hit whatever you can. Except…

Respect? Missed it.

Dynamics? Fucking missed it.

Me? Missed me with all that shit.

‘Cause I’m not even there. You’re getting off the coaster, the merry-go-round, and even the ferris wheel. Each of them lets you off at the exact same point at which you got on. I didn’t say those rides go on forever. You LITERALLY made that up. I said they just end exactly where you were.

Where you got on.

Where you get off.

Back at the fucking start.

Don’t feel bad, I’m still where we started too though. You’re bouncing from ride to ride like you’re being chased by a Reggie-monster through Dollywood. Massive throwback there, did you dig back that far?

I’m still over here in the funhouse.

Come on in again. You’re going to have to. Because remember… you’re stepping into my Universe.

And here? All the mirrors are still making you look like shit.”

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6D: The Girl

“…I am a shining example of honour and virtue; a master of many forms of combat; fluent in fifty-seven different dialects of American English;…” There are only about thirty. “…I won the hammer throw at the 1988 Secret Olympics with two broken arms; am capable of penetrating the most advanced MS-DOS systems on the planet; can hold my breath underwater for two whole minutes; currently hold the North Korean record for best bowling game with a score of three-hundred and fourteen; can fold a fitted sheet by myself; and am the greatest practitioner in recorded history of the super secret schoolMAN technique to finishing wrestling matches.”

That’s how the North Korean War Criminal introduces himself to the family.

They don’t want him there. I don’t even know how he found us.

"This is a family affair," the girl's aunt says to me, among other things. "You need to get your friend to leave."

I don't really know if 'friend' is the right word, but I suppose it's close enough. I do know what they're not paying attention to, however. As each member of the family screams at NK, and he flops to the ground in what he would later call the Sisyphus defence (one can push him as much as they want, but like a boulder up a hill he will always fall back into place), my eyes fall only on the girl.

She's not bothered by his presence.

She was bothered by him on the ship, until he started reading out his research. She was again at the Definitely-A-Secret-North-Korean-Base. But here? She treats him like she does her family. Including me.

Basically by ignoring him and resuming counting stones.

Why him? Why Morbid Angel? Why Lycana? One of them, I’m consider a ‘friend’, I guess. One, an ‘enemy’. The other… a bit of both. What does she know?

The argument continues.

The blue-haired woman, who represents the branch of the family known as The Wolves, demands that the girl come with her. She will train her to fight.

The red-tinged hag, who represents the branch of the family known as The Witches, makes demands of her own. She promises to train the girl to know. Ironic then, that she doesn’t realise that the girl already ‘knows’. The hag herself doesn’t know.

The pudgy man, who represents the branch of the family known as The Aliens, tells us that he’ll take the girl along with him as they explore the unknown. He says he’ll train her to explore. Sounds kind of shit to me.

The North Korean War Criminal simply promises to teach her to be the second-most virtuous, third-most valiant, and first-equal in terms of devotion. He didn’t say what any of that was in reference to.

The family is divided. No consensus can be earned. I don’t know how literal the family divisions are supposed to be interpreted as, but they feel pretty on the fucking nose. One of the more significant mysteries, in my mind, is what the girl’s aunt, and by proxy, her sister, represent.

“Enough!” a domineering voice echoes throughout the living room. Standing in the entranceway is a woman as old as the red witch, but without the imperfections. Her voice cuts through all dissent; even NK shuts up. The girl’s aunt looks meek as she scurries to this matron’s side. WIth the way that she stands, shrunken and passive, while yielding control over her own house to this woman, I determine the relationship pretty quickly.

This is her mother. The girl’s grandmother.

And she represents power.

The matron cuts through silence towards the girl.

“Hello,” she says, crouching down.

“Hi,” the girl replies, still counting.

“Six-hundred and twenty-three,” the matron says, echoing my own count.

“I know,” the girl says, continuing to take stones out of the bowl.

“Oh?” the matron remarks in surprise. “What are you doing then?”

“There are six-hundred and twenty-three stones in this bowl,” she explains, repeating what we all know by now. “But there is only one… of these!”

She lifts her hand up to show the matron. Sitting on the tip of her finger is a snail. Its shell is as shiny and black as the stones were, and only the very tip of its head pokes its way out from underneath its protective outer.

The matron purses her lips as she reaches down and plucks the snail from the girl’s finger. She holds it up so that the light catches its shell. It’s quite remarkable actually.

Until it gets crushed under her fingers.

The matron crouches down again and looks the girl square in the eyes. Like I would. From the distance that I watch from, I see what I’ve seen a thousand times by now. Water begins to fill the girl’s eyes.

“Do you know why snails have shells?” she asks. The girl shakes her head, and I don’t know if it’s because she doesn’t know as much as she thinks, or just a product of the intensity that this woman exudes. Even though she wants to cry, in the face of her grandmother, her tears are kept at bay. “Because their bodies are weak. Your body is not weak, is it?”

Again, the girl shakes her head. Satisfied, her grandmother rises up once more, and looks around to the rest of her family.

“There will be no debate,” she says, flat and firm. “My granddaughter will come with me. She will reclaim the birthright that my daughter took from her.”

The girl’s aunt shrinks even further as she thinks about her sister.

“And she will reclaim her name.” The matron lets that sentence hover in the air. The hairs on the back of my neck bristle at the prospect.

A name.

“Come, Paritegi,” she commands of the girl.

A name.

Paritegi.

Wherefore art thou Paritegi?

There is no resistance nor argument from the family. However…

“She will come with me!” the North Korean War Criminal insists. He plants both his feet into the ground, but does nothing to block the path. The grandmother just ignores him, while the girl - Paritegi - gives him a little wave on her way out.

Someone else blocks the path though.

I fucking do.

I went through all of this, just to what? Have it undercut it at the end?

“No.” My arms cross across my chest and my voice does not waver. I stand in front of the door, and force the grandmother to notice me for the first time.

“You are The Deliverer?” she asks, with almost an air of thanks to her words.

“Call me whatever you want,” I reply. I, The Label-Gatherer.

None of this feels right. If I’m serious about trying to be better, then I can’t in good conscience allow this to proceed. The Universe brought me here for a reason.

“The girl isn’t going with you.”

“Yes, I am.” It’s the girl. Both the matron and I look down at her, and this time, we shrink.

It was not just The Universe, was it? It was her. She led me here. She directed the path. The Universe brought me into her life so that I could get her here for this very moment.

“It’s going to be okay,” she reassures. “This is the necessity. You did it.”

She’s calm but she isn’t happy. On that I can relate. It has been common practice for me to feel more attuned to her emotions than anyone else I’ve ever met. To feel that connection.

I did it.

“You can move now,” the grandmother says, but where my voice didn’t waver, I can hear a slight quiver in hers. Good. She needs to know.

I will keep the girl safe.

“We’ll meet again,” the girl says, encouraging me to do as the matron asked. I step to the side and let them pass.

“Goodbye,” I whisper, and that finally brings a smile to Paritegi’s face.

Watching as they walk to a non-descript black van, NK appears by my side. There she goes, a girl with a name. I say it in my head. ‘Paritegi’. Watched by people called Alias and the North Korean War Criminal. That’s gotta be a fucking joke. Maybe I should try it on Lycana to see if she finds a way to get defensive about it.

“Comrade Alias,” NK speaks in English, so that the others wouldn’t overhear. “Shall we coordinate a counterattack?”

“No,” I say. “She’s where she needs to be. I… I played my role.”

I did it.

I smile at him. He does his best to return it, and that just makes me smile even more. Chuckle, even. He mimics, doing his best to fit in.

“You played your role too, NK,” I tell him. I think some genuine emotion actually creeps in on his face. If it did, it’s gone before I could be sure.

“Shall we check the shipping routes for a path back to New York then?” he asks, thinking ahead. “We cannot defend our championships without being there to actually compete. Do you have the… Magic Clock?”

Somehow, he’s pulled his massive notebook out of hammerspace again, and is ready to jot down my response.

“Yeah,” I agree. “Let’s do it.”

We walk out of the house, and off into the world. NK begins to chatter about the plan to get us back to Busan, but in truth I’m only half paying attention. The girl’s… Paritegi’s… final words are still rattling around my head.

“We’ll meet again.”

As if the family of fucking weirdos that NK and I leave behind wasn’t enough, those words give away the goat. They whip around my head again.

“We’ll meet again.”

I know what that means.

This is a semicolon, not a period.

The story isn’t over.

Which means that no matter what happens, there’s only one thing in my power to do now to get to the next chapter.

Fucking FIGHT.

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6E: Better Man

“I’ve asked you this a few times now, Tavora, in varying contexts, but I’ll give it one more crack. I’m not optimistic about you even understanding the question given how your abject bed-shitting has continued, but we still have this time left so why not try to make the most of it?

‘How’d I do?’

I framed this all at the beginning about trying to ‘be better’.

Did I?

Did I stick the fucking landing?

Am I ‘better’?

I mean, you’ve been so full of compliments, right? You should be able to tell me.

Yeah… right.

Oh, there I go again, casting shade. Shit, maybe I am bad at receiving praise. It tracks though. The life I’ve lived - or said I have - it fits, you know? It’s clinically consistent, for wherever consistency is worth now. Not that you’d be able to ‘help’ on that front. Each time you open that asshole on your face, you spend so much time talking about how you expected me to address you differently than I have. That doesn’t sound like someone who sees me. That doesn’t sound like someone who understands. That sure as shit doesn’t sound like someone so full of compliments. I don’t take them well? Fuck, you’re not giving them well.

But that’s okay. That’s at least what I expected of you.

Because… I see you.

SEE how easy that is?

No. You don’t.

Apt analogy with that kaleidoscope, pal. That’s exactly what you see. You see a kid colouring a purple duck, but only describe it as the colour or the animal. Purple. Or Duck. Never both. And your hearing? Well I think you forgot to hit unmute on the telly when the commercials were over, and now whatever it is you see, just doesn’t have any context.

How’d I do? Am I ‘better’?

You wouldn’t even fucking know. You don’t even want to.

You’re too busy looking for points where what I was and what I am are different, and shouting them down like it’s something I haven’t said myself; like it’s something you haven’t said yourself. And then you get all bent out of shape, wait, no, these should be your words right? Umm… ’uppity’! Yeah, that sounds about right. You get ‘uppity’ when I ever call you out on it. You keep acting like you’ve acknowledged things were different, but you’ve also gone on a - wait for it! - fucking rollercoaster about which parts. I thought we had reached an agreement on all that last time, but wow. Apparently not.

Hey, since what’s different and what isn’t seems to be a common theme for us right now, let’s go for one more round, eh? Let’s talk about having a different lens on life. About ‘being better’. That’s my schtick this fortnight, in case you didn't notice. I would’ve thought that you had picked it up given how much you’ve seen’. Not you though. It takes a special talent to miss the fucking mark when it’s literally within touching distance. But then you couldn’t go and claim to not be surprised, disappointed, or insert-appropriate-adjective-here, when that LITERALLY describes how you were acting.

Oh, sorry, did I lose you at ‘fortnight’? That refers to a period of two weeks in pretty much every other country other than the United States. I realise you might know that already given you’re at least a little more otherworldly than your average wolf, but based on the way this has all played out, I figured I’d play it safe and explain it like you’re a fucking a child because… well… you know. We’ve covered that.

Must be that rollercoaster again. Stuck upside down in the loop-de-loop and you desperately need to go to the bathroom. There’s only one way that’s going, right?

And would you look at that?! I managed to reference your bathroom habits again! I probably wouldn’t have to if you didn’t keep taking a shit in public. Well take a selfie of this moment, Tav’, because it’s the last moment before you’re forced to confront the fact that all the ‘growth’ you said you were trying to make… it’s the wrong kind of ‘growth’. It’s malignant. BUT the good news is, I can get it out of you! I just need to go in through your mouth. With my hand this time instead of my words.

Here’s some of your own to lube it up:

You don’t believe that you make me better? Hmph.

I ‘chased my tail coming after you quite a bit in the beginning before I found my way’. Hmph again.

Is that… is that supposed to be an example of me not becoming better? Is that supposed to show anything other than a guy who was in the goodman loony bin finally finding his path in life? Sounds like someone became… ‘better’. In a couple of senses of the word, even. You know… like I fucking said at the beginning.

‘Amazing’.

It’s awfully great when the very next sentence someone says breaks apart their entire argument, isn’t it? You should try it next time you go for a fucking ‘gotcha’.

Oh, but you don’t do that, do you? Nope! You said I needed to own that, despite the fact that you’ve obviously seen where I very much did own it against Bobby Bourbon. You know, before you even flapped your rancid gums. Before I shove my hand down his. Ignoring things for a soundbite. No owning it for you, though, right? We both agree that you don't have to get back on that rollercoaster, but you’ve taken five trips by now this fortnight alone. Are you really going for a sixth?

Even though I’m telling you what you’re doing, you don’t even realise you’re doing it.

Sight without hearing.

Speech without thinking.

Sometimes, we don’t need to think though, do we? Since you asked, I don’t think much about why you helped me. Before The Universe was mine, I had a lot of trouble discerning that more abstract drive from my own, more base instincts. You know that. You felt it, and you still have the teeth marks in your skin to show it. But with The Universe in my hands, that hasn’t been a problem for me anymore. I turned up to your little boarding kennel knowing that I would find what I needed there. If that meant you letting me in, as it did, then so be it. I wasn’t surprised, but I was prepared for something else if I needed to be. Something more; something worse; something… deadly. If that’s what The Universe required, then so be it. I was prepared to die that day, Tavora, as I was when you appeared in front of me on that road.

As I am today.

As I will be tomorrow.

As I am every day.

That doesn’t mean I roll over and let it happen though. I just know that with The Universe in my hands, even death is temporary. It is, as you would say, a contradiction.

That’s the fucking point. Or so I can surmise, if you’ll believe this unreliable narrator.

I don’t need you to be afraid of me. I just need you to realise what this is if there is to be any chance of a… err… ‘productive’ relationship going forward between us. It’s not that I seek to step on you, you just happen to be the step. Does that make sense? Try to understand it. Put aside your fucking ‘gotcha’ games, and try to engage with things on a better level than that before you get knocked on your ‘good seat’ without you even knowing what’s what. I may not hate you anymore, but I think we’ve established that we’re not exactly gonna be on each other’s Christmas card lists. Still… for all the differences that we’ve uncovered, we have, however, settled on something that we have in common. I’m not sure if you picked up on it.

We both believe The Universe is guiding us.

Here’s the thing though, since taking possession of It, I’ve damn well fucking showed that it’s guiding me. When The Universe tells me that my fight will continue, it continues, doesn’t it? Not in the pick yourself up and try again type that you’ve been talking about. Not like that ‘Ever forward’ of yours either, since that turned out to be a crock of shit.

I’m talking about everything I’ve ever said coming true for the last six fucking months. Death and survival included, if you catch my drift.

For you, that’s probably going to sound as convincing as your rationale does to me. ‘You will because you have’ is the gist of it, right?

But you haven’t. I’m different. You said it. Yadda yadda fucking yadda. Deliberate repetition. Rollercoaster’s back at the fucking beginning.

Tav’... this ain’t fucking Frozen meets Game of Thrones meets Twilight. There is no Team Edward or Jacob, just as there is no Team Lycana.

There is just The Universe. There is me. Those two things are pretty much the same thing by now.

I’m doing what I do.

I’m gonna Eat Lycana.

…

Come on, tell me you weren’t waiting for me to say it?

Ex-oh-ex-oh!

It’s fucking time. And in case you haven’t been paying attention, time, like The Universe, Is fucking MINE.

…

...

Fifty-nine ‘fucks’ - that one included. Did I beat TK?”

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6F: The Story Isn’t Finished

As a byproduct of their ability to communicate, these beings have managed to construct a series of stories through which they transfer messages about the world. As with everything, they insist on coming up with names to label these stories, but they often struggle to define a clear boundary between some of these words. Two words of note in this space are ‘myth’ and ‘religion’. As best I can tell, they are the same type of story, save for ‘myths’ having value and belief systems attached to them that are no longer relevant to the timeframe in which the story is shared. You will, of course, remember that this species still, quite humorously, views the passage of time as a linear process. A ‘religion’ on the other hand, is just a collection of stories that has some level of social acceptance within their narrow… Oh… Oh, hello. You’re back. What… what are you doing? What’s that for? No. Don’t do that. Don’t do that. Stop it. You’re going to… You’re going to… You’re… … … …