All Fall Down

[tezcatl-ipoca.livejournal.com]

I felt her die, the girl. Beginning.

The end of worlds. Part of me knows this. But there's always been another after, and this time there won't be. And I should be glad. But the part of me that's young and saw some of the world with the Carnival and had that day with Brant and loves - too many people - I don't know. But I am tired. So tired, since that day. And this was what Management brought me back for, and what I was meant for from the beginning.

All of the parts of me, thought - the old god, the man who was Tez, and the me that's Micah - know where I belong, though. He always said that I'd betray him. I always thought I'd have a plan. Instead there's just rain, and me wondering whether, if we'd had a child, if would have been that one that'd died to begin this.

I wonder what Management will do. I can feel them in the night, as I can feel the dead goddess in the rain. None of this is very well organised. I wonder where Genny is, and Valmont.

I could make the earth shake again under my feet as I go, if I wanted. I could be the spaces beneath the earth and between the stars. I'm not. I'm just getting wet. But I know where he is. I always know.

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[managementchild.livejournal.com]

Mother has business and so I have been out walking. I went to peek at Father now he is a baby; she's so small, I could fit her head inside my mouth. But I don't, because that is not interesting. Instead I grind rocks between my teeth, pebbles and mortar, so I can taste the different tastes of this town. The earthquake loosened a roof tile and I carry it between these fingers and lick it thoughtfully, thinking of how many raindrops have rolled down this roof. One year there was snow so heavy other parts of the roof pitched, but not this tile. I can taste its terracotta pride -

The pain is sharp and a surprise. Not a nice surprise like cake or entrails spilled in sacrifice on an altar unused for centuries, but a horrid surprise, and I wail like a baby and unravel like a skein of wool and wrap myself around him tighter tighter so I can strangle him crush him make him dead.

[al-shairan.livejournal.com]

I hardly care about this body's pain, and so the wire-thin press of it into me is something I can ignore as I drive the knife deep inside it, seeking out a place that works like a heart. But - the wire tears at more than flesh. I can feel it digging into the parts of me that are no longer flint and stardust, the places that have wept, and that is a pain that makes me howl.

"Stop," I cry out in fury, and there is blood and venom and coaldust all over my hands, but the pain does not stop.

[tezcatl-ipoca.livejournal.com]

I don't want to be a god. I want to be Micah, and him to be Brant.

But for him I will be what I have been, the flint and the obsidian knife (http://www.azteccalendar.com/god/itztli.html), and he may be stars and it may be tangling strangeness but I have been the heart of a volcano and I can burn and I can cut and I can hear him cry out for it to stop, and I cut at it, slice and saw, and it doesn't bleed like a living thing and I will be everything and anything I can to make it stop.

[al-shairan.livejournal.com]

He is a god of stone, and he is beautiful. The child mews at last, and I tug him away.

"You cannot finish it," I say, and kiss his flint lips in gratitude. "It must be me." Because Management will seek me out, then, not him. I want their anger for me.

It does not take so very long, after that. Places within me throb like pulled teeth, like an old wound crying with rheumatism on a wet night. The child is gone.

"Management will notice, soon," I say quietly. I can feel Nanshe in the rain that falls around us. That bitch and her eternal optimism, soaking into everything. "You should go to Genny, or to that barkeep you love, or Syl." I should be alone. I have always imagined myself alone at the end of all this. And strangely I find I care that he should die in company he cares for. Once I would have wanted him with me. But I can give him no consolation, at the end.

[tezcatl-ipoca.livejournal.com]

It's like coming back from very far away. For a moment my body struggles, trying to be one thing and another - the jaguar, Tez-that-was, Micah - and then settles. "I don't want to leave you," I say. Can hear the boy's stubbornness in my voice, through the hoarseness. There's something all over me that's like blood but isn't. "I will if you want me to."

[al-shairan.livejournal.com]

"I do not want you with me," I say gently. He will think it is a rejection. I stroke his hair back. This, then, is the last I will see of him. "Night Wind. Itztli. Micah." I kiss his forehead. I have, I have come to realise, loved all those parts of him. He was the places that Management's child hurt. "Goodbye."

[tezcatl-ipoca.livejournal.com]

He says it so gently. It's almost kind. You have always been alone. His hand is gentle on me too, his lips. He says my names, and I look at him - at it, at the thing it is, the horrible thing, all that ugliness and beauty and strangeness and -

"I love you." I say it defiantly, because this isn't a night for tears. This is the end of everything. "All of me and all of you." Goodbye. I don't say it. "Good luck." For what little use that could ever be for him.

I could kiss him, but I don't. I walk away instead, without looking back, my back straight. I don't know where I'm going.