to the grave {deadlock gang v mutts day 2}

❛ FRANCISCO BLOOM

     The world is soaked with quietness.

Flower petals against flower petals, soft draughts and faded melodies of distant songbirds – but atop all of that, is his heartbeat: feverish, skipping like stones over a calm lake. He doesn’t know what his heart beats for. Francis had schooled himself on how ignore it, masking the bothersome rhythm with a mirthful tune he’s picked up from his mother, yet the beats refuse to be hurled into oblivion as of right now. And, he does not want to sing when the world is quiet and foes could dwell near earshot. Ronan’s scrawny handwriting arises in the back of his eyelids, brewing terror there.

     Heartbeats quicken.

     I'll find you. Just you wait, Bloom.

If the other wished for Francis to be dreadful, it’s come true. His heart trembles with dread, with the caution that Ronan’s silhouette can emerge from the pale darkness at any given moment, with the shadow of paranoia the boy has left to encroach upon him. A eleven years old Francisco Bloom thought of ghosts and goblins to be mystic, hideous figments of his broad imagination, but Ronan introduces him to the revelation that they are as alive as ever and dances amongst humans.

Ghosts of the boy haunt the peripheries of his restless eyes until he rubs them with his knuckles.

There’s still dread in his heart when Francis decides to rest closer to Nico – but it’s the kind of dread associated with leaps of faith and falls of grace, the kind of dread that arises from touching bands of cool skin with a predator. He doesn’t know if he’ll be devoured and spat back out with skinned bones or sheltered in his den. All Francis knows and feels, is the fragrant pollen dust on their noses and Nico’s unswerving heartbeat.

     His own calms as it hears another’s.

He doesn’t want to be heartless if his heart can read unspoken poetry to Nico’s. Between breathing in the dried blood on the boy’s collar and scouting for Myrcella in between the constellations overhead, tired bones discover sleep.

The anthem plays out, azure-lighted, and the face broadcasted across it bleeds into Francis’s dreams.

     Myrcella is resurrected in his dreams,
     but as grotesque as she can ever be.

The suns that underlined each thread of her golden mane have died and now, she wears a shabby, dirtied crown.

Breathing out a ferocious snarl that is unlike Myrcella's silvery timbre, her nails – crusted with soot and graveyard soil – reach out for Francisco.

She is carrion, a part of the cemetery below them, an apparition, and a girl who took a leap of faith unknowing that it was a perilous descent to the end. Her gold has corroded, her skin has purpled, and she is simply no more. So, closing his eyes even more in this nightmare, Francis holds his aim in between her eyebrows and lets his floral knife become as free as a bird, nesting it in her forehead.

When Francis awakes, the exhaustion from the bloodbath is a mere scar on the skin, a healing bruise. The sunflowers, yellow and roborant, greet him and Francis feels guilty when he wishes for a good breakfast instead of them. Sunrises are not complete if there is no omelet or bowl of wild-berries. But, he doesn’t let his wants meddle with the needs, rising to his two feet to fetch the carpetbag before tapping on Nico’s nose and Jessica’s shoulder.

     “Rise and shine,” he says.

     “We need to leave for water.”

They wade through the sunflowers, Francis cautious but irrepressibly drinking in the yellowed horizon, and reach the other mouth of the field where it connects to grassed plains and plains and plains. It is a horizon-devouring meadow left untended, overgrown and shabby with sharp, green blades that rise to kiss Francis’s eased fingertips.

The dance of the grass, a constant and hypnotic dance, provokes him to hum a lazy tune that symphonizes with the dizzy movements.

Jessica leads – a petite shadow ahead while Francis lets Nico lean on him – and the mere sight of her seems to echo Ronan’s words.

Tell Braun that her dreams will be burnt to the ground like her friend's.

“Jessica.” His voice is the dreamy light and feather-soft shadows as it calls for the other girl.

“I got a message yesterday – I think it was partially for you.” Francis hands her the piece of paper, looking at the doe-eyed girl and the crumbled edges with distaste.

     “It’s from Ronan.”

His name tastes bitter on his tongue, a flavor he’s never learnt to stomach correctly.

As Jessica rakes through the letter’s contents, Francis’s eyes are skyward, mapping out the corners of the blue – drinking in the endlessness – and widening at the sight of grey. He doesn’t react much to the two crows, not before their dark plumes glide close to his cheeks and not before one’s talons are drawn across his bicep.

“Aren’t birds supposed to be friendly?” One hand moves, pressing the cut, as another grasps one of the floral throwing knives suspended from his belt. Even though each part of him is clustered with trembling synapses, Francisco Bloom is not feeble.

He is a delicate creature —
but a creature nevertheless.

He won’t let the omens of dark, ruffled feathers and blood-soaked talons touch him or the others.

❛ FRANCISCO BLOOM

Francis’s one hand winds tightly around his bag, desperate to shield the sunflower heads inside.

He’s picked up the ones Jessica’s glaive has savaged and decapitated, all broken flower heads, and only feels the weight of them all when he’s surrounded by other omens.

     The girl breaks a flower head like a wishbone,
     & those actions revisit her own bones, tenfold.

Startled, he searches for Jessica and is relieved to discover her, alive and bristling with untamed violence. Her blade is a silver arc across the air but the creature evades before it could graze the vital parts. Cuts run shallow, yet the fracture lines across Francis’s physique runs deep, all dark seams and broken edges. He feels each one of them overly as bones move after heeding Nico’s shout –

     “Watch out!”

The dark equine creature’s hooves miss him by mere inches, and the price for this act of selflessness is talons finding Nico’s skin instead.

He envisages red carnation petals cascading out of where blood does. Then, he closes his eyes.

Francisco has never been a fan of ravens. They were irritable creatures, having excessive pride in their beautiful black plumes and crystal-cut eyes, and often stole from his orchard back in Five: seedlings freshly planted, young flowers, and unbruised fruit.

The quickest way to frighten a raven is through extravagant gestures, but these are not ravens.

These run with dark necromancy in their veins, brought back to life to feast and destroy. He could see it in their eyes, in the hungry grasp of their talons. They want to eat, to devour, and to ruin. The two predators next to him do not compare to the two creature’s fierceness, or so he muses until Nico’s spear sends one bird spiraling to the soil.

“Nice one, Nico.” His ivories beam at the other despite the life-and-death scenario they are facing. Francis never shies away from a grin, especially when someone is worthy of it. The three of them are a strange dynamic, a fury of different elements that cluster altogether seamlessly.

In between Jessica’s cut at the remaining bird and the equine creature’s ragged breaths, Francis finds adrenaline and a thrill in this violence, in this killing. It feels out of place within Francis’s ribcage of flowers, a juxtaposition, but he does not refuse it. Instead, he lets this thrill conquer him and it feels like submerging oneself in a claw foot bathtub overflown to the seams with ice water.

     It feels like paralysis &
     excitement, all at once.

It feels like the one time he’s sneaked out of his room after hours and tiptoed to the orchard. It had the uncanny magic that places in the dark night often take on, all bright fireflies and blueberries turned silver under the moonshine. He remembers the freedom, the way the earth aided him in this furtive visit, the warmth of fireflies.

     This is his element.
     This is his kingdom.

The grass moves in accordance to Francis, as Francis moves in accordance to his thrill.

     His floral knife is a sharp gleam,
     a falling star, bright and perilous.

❛ FRANCISCO BLOOM

     The air hums with sweat and battle.

He’s encountered storms such as this before, felt the rain soak him anew. Storms that are just mere, extensive metaphors, storms without the howling winds or sheets of rain, storms that can be remembered and named. This, is a storm of broken bones and dark feathers. 

The quietness before this was the calm, and what precedes the calm are — clashes of thunder and lightning, electricity and noise, fear and dark delight. It drenches him completely, from head to toe, and Francisco makes a lopsided grin.

The grass below has become checkered with blood, a mix between mutt and human’s, and he feels blood on his body, thick and adhesive, a cruel second skin that Francis is guilt-ridden to feel somewhat comfortable in. This is his element, but at the same time, it isn’t. He’s never killed anything before, with the exception of orchard vermin and mosquitoes, and never even dreamt about the act.

This, he muses, is Jessica’s element: bloodshed and turbulence, hunger and ambition. She is the most alive of the trio, armed with a glaive and a smirk that are both equally lethal and cruel.

     Her eyes are electric.

Francis envisages the three of them as being bonded altogether in a circuit – all sparks and hazardous voltages – and he feels a sudden surge of shared power overflowing from his fingertips as they reach for the third knife.

     They would do this.

They would reign victorious for this day. He’d watched Myrcella die and it was hideous, a memory that the cerebrum hid and abridged; Francis won’t let it repeat. He would try to prevent this creature’s hooves from breaking a skull open, like the girl’s horseshoe had. And if destiny asks for a skull to be cracked, it will not be Nico’s or Jessica’s.

     The lamb understands its role.

The equine’s hooves drum a wretched song, one that he feels within the bones even: a steadfast noise that warns him of imminent attacks. His soft heart beats in accordance to it. Francisco Bloom is dreadful most of the time, but he has never been a coward. He uses fear to do his own bidding and that’s what he does as fingertips release the knife.

     It soars towards a sordid home,
     all his fears intact in its bronze.