pockets full of stones, [m, l, & j] d4 suite. day 4.

I listen to Vin’s stories and lay curled up on my side, bunkered within my clothes like the coziest hermit crab in the world.

I listen to Vin’s stories and I am eight again, fighting sleep as Mama spins tales near the fireplace the way Vin does now.

I listen to Vin’s stories and I am six again and nothing bad or tragic has ever or will happen to me as I drift towards sleep.

In dreams, Helga Hundingsbane is Elias and his greatest love is Mama. They fall for each other once more, then they die. It doesn’t change the story. It doesn’t change anything really. The dawn star rests a hand on my shoulder and it burns, but I do not protest.

It is twilight. It is only me, the star, and the sea before us, swaying and wine-dark. I was cast from it, driftwood, and I want to go back into that great nothingness, sinking over and over again.

But the tides do not take me back.

I wake up half-remembered, my face itching against rough sand and the wind howling through my clothes and ears. The world is ruffled. I smell a storm in the air. It is not the same one as the summer storms back home, but sharper, crisper, hungrier.

Get up, Mateo.

I do not.

If there is a deathbed I could choose, the sea is an appealing choice. All that depth, all that hunger, I’d let it consume me whole. The waves can take my bones, the salt my flesh, and at the end of it all, I’ll be nothing and everything all at once, something shimmering within the pearly froth.

Vin says I am good but what if I want to be nothing? What if I want to be sundered into a thousand pieces, then cast towards the sea, and become a part of the salt? What if, after all the long days and longer nights, all I want is eternal rest?

I am so, so tired.

Get up, son.

The thing about Izars is that we are born world-weary. Our bones have been reused and reworn, secondhand calcium, and they know the weight of centuries.

I feel it whenever I look through photo albums, the ones that never got filled - I feel it whenever I see the empty pages, the blank faces. A piece of history that we had was ruthlessly erased. It is, perhaps, the gravest murder of all to decimate an entire generation. How many Izars died in the dark days? How many Izars had we lost? We’ll never know. And on this forsaken beach, I mourn them each and every one of them.

And for them, I get up. My knives - named after each doomed Izar - do not weigh me down as I land on the creaky pier wood from the bedroom area.

That’s when the pair emerges.

I see their backs first - one petite, the other familiar - and then they both turn in unison.

My heart smarts. It’s sickening, skin-crawling even, but that boy from Three looks so much like a young Elias that I can't stop staring. I can’t stop staring at his broad back. I can’t stop staring at his strong jaw. I can’t stop. I want to both throttle him and embrace him.

And beside him, rocking her sea-tossed hair, is Laney. It’s a surprise how she has once reminded me of Arcadia - the two are two separate entities, two different forces. Arcadia has a heart - Laney, I am not so sure. At least not towards people who helped murder her ally. The thought pricks my fingers as I make them reach for a knife.

I know my odds.

No Vin, no Roe, it’s laughable how screwed I am, but at least I’ll die near the tide and with a knife in my hands. Choosing how you die is an a honor served to very few. 

Then a thunderous boom explodes from the left, water spraying everywhere, and the large, dark shadow on the pier is all I see before the impact.

I stumble back, bones rattling, away from a chunk of the pier that is now only splinters. Looming before us is - is - I don’t know. My hand extends instinctively to where I hear sputtering sounds, and there is Javier, drenched, helpless. My hand hangs in the air. “Get up,” I mutter at first, dazed. Then, as the tentacle rises again: “Take my hand and get the fuck up onto the pier! Now!”