and still i tried to pull you
into my own hurricane
it's like you spot me trying from a
thousand miles away
i look down on you so deep down I know
that we're the same
it's stupid thinking that you would want to
come play my game
❧ solange, "bad girls" [verdine version]
On the cobblestone street bordering Barnaby's, Sunkanmi fought herself.
More specifically, fought a piece of paper. Even more specifically, fought a word.
Minutes earlier, Sunkanmi added a receipt onto Callion's ledger with a friendly note to charge her haul to the potentate's account. Standing firm in the haze, she twirled her charcoal pen before deciding to conduct an experiment without Xosa's input. This decision was married to the uneasy conviction that whatever mess her twin flame made inside of Barnaby's while unsupervised was not her responsibility.
...so long as he made it quick.
Outside, she went. Their chain propped the heavy wooden door ajar and a hoard of dust motes stormed into the heat. The air tasted of shy rain. Of horse and hay. Of chopped wood, hot brick, and glazed ceramic.
Satchel heavy with goods, Sunkanmi leaned beneath the shop's awning and battled an enemy she could not spell, speak, or remember.
Through great effort, she engraved the word on a scrap of paper by parsing the four letters individually, instead of as a whole. She could not sound it out, couldn't hear the voice in her head that narrated her thoughts.
X...
[C'mon.]
O...
[Easy.]
S...
[Almost there.]
...?
Sweat broke out on her forehead.
[What...]
Her eyes crossed. The symbols mocked her, shamed her for her weakness.
...???
[What letter comes after 'S'?]
Y? Q? I?
[You know damn well his name is not 'Xosyqi.']
She cycled through every letter in the alphabet, somehow skipping over the one vowel needed to complete her soulmate's puzzle.
[It's over for me.]
Sunkanmi despaired. Warmth pooled over her lip and down her chin.
[I'm illiterate.]
"Hey, take it easy!" Xosa's shout startled her. The god hurried over with a backpack stuffed to the brim. "You're going to seriously hurt yourself if you keep that up!"
"What on Samsxal are you talking about?"
"Your face is leaking."
Sunkanmi tapped her lips and her fingers came away red. A thin trail of blood dripped onto her poncho. "Oh."
"Stop. Please. For my sake." Xosa thrust a round of bandages at her and she mopped her bloody face. "Normally I'd be flattered you went through so much trouble, but this is too much, even for me."
"This isn't devotion," she declared, to which Xosa laughed heartily.
"You're right, it's labor. Which is arguably more valuable."
Beyond frustrated, Sunkanmi crumpled the bandages into a street bin. She could count her lifetime losses on one hand and didn't quite enjoy the sensation.
To add insult to injury, Xosa's naked concern was almost... endearing.
[Hah. As if he cares.]
Sunkanmi's tongue ran across her teeth, wiping away the reddish stains.
"I will have strong words with your sister when we meet."
"Good luck. Laquheia will spit them back out to you ten times worse," Xosa plucked the paper out of her free hand and squinted at her handwriting. "Aye!"
Sunkanmi cringed, expecting the worst. "Please don't-"
"That's the last clue. A." Xosa scribbled on the scrap before folding it back into her pocket for safe-keeping. "X-O-S-A."
"A..." Sunkanmi mulled on this as if Xosa dropped some incredibly profound revelation instead of just, you know, finishing his name. "Of course, how could I miss that?"
"How did you even manage to write my name in the first place? Laqueheia's barrier should've stopped you from recognizing it-"
Right on cue, a doll vendor across the square loudly advertised his wares. His cart, loaded with toys (for children) and idols (for semi-religious converts), tilted precariously to the side.
"Xosa totems! Buy your Xosa totems here!" The vendor blew his whistle, kissed a disturbingly familiar doll, and kicked a sign that read XOSA CHARMS in big red letters. "Xosa death wards for sale! Cast curses and cure scurvy! Our Pear King appreciates a token of devotion, especially on your home altar! The Reaper will not darken your doorstep if you buy now, now, now!"
"Aha!" Xosa's smile cut his face in two. "Is that what they think I look like? Pocket-sized and soft as yarn?"
"It's a marked improvement," Sunkanmi groused. She heard Xosa's alternative titles just fine, but his true name vanished instantly, as expected.
The vendor continued: "Rotte, Rotte, betray us not! Get him now while it's hot, hot, hot! The Lord of Death may steal your breath, but buy today and you'll escape his theft!"
"What a clever wordsmith," Xosa mused. "His grasp of language is so precise, Poallu should hire him to serenade the celestial court."
Fire crackled in Sunkanmi's throat. "You're only saying that because he's yelling about you."
"And what of it? It's not like hoards of mortals are begging to lend me kindness."
Their gazes battled briefly, victory decided well before the forces joined.
(she wins... this round.)
Xosa begrudgingly focused back on the cart. To his astonishment, several well-dressed townspeople stopped and bought boxes of idols, proudly toting them home as gifts for hated in-laws and nosey neighbors.
And then Xosa (aka rotte, aka our pear king, aka the reaper, aka death) had a great - no, a fantastic - nay, a splendid idea:
"I should buy one."
"No. With what money?"
"It's literally my image, if anything he should give me one for free!"
"No."
"Perhaps he'd be amenable to a trade?" Xosa dug around in his backpack, flinched, and pulled back a hand coated in reddish, golden flecked liquid. It reeked of fermented juice, flowing freely from the cut in his palm.
"...Ouch?"
"Serves you right," Sunkanmi tossed his bandages back, which hit him square in the chest.
"My shovel cut me," the glimmering gush stunned him. "I'm bleeding."
"So? A crypt collapsed on us weeks ago and that didn't phase you."
"Yes, but that wasn't blood. Real blood. And I healed almost instantly." Xosa whipped around, clutching his wounded hand. The skin slowly stitched together, leaving behind a faint scar. "Do you understand what this means?"
"Buy a shovel pouch next time?"
"I'm losing my godhood."
Xosa, breathless and shaking, paused for Sunkanmi to render him the appropriate devastation. You know, the typical reaction to horrible news - weeping and vomiting and screaming and such.
"Okay?"
"Okay?!"
Realizing his soulmate would provide none, Xosa boldly forged ahead as if over-explaining his blood loss would induce the required weeping, vomiting, screaming, etcetera, etcetera.
Xosa said, "the mortal plane is consuming my divinity faster than I can replenish it."
And Sunkanmi said, "Huh. I guess this is a problem for you," as if he was missing the point.
"Uh, yeah it's kind of a big deal. I can't return to the celestial plane without it! If Poallu restores my crown of wrath I can reverse the process, but the damage will be irreversible if I remain down here too long."
Xosa gasped and stared at the sky as if the answers were painted in it. "I'll become mortal. I'll die."
She would never admit it, not in a million, billion, garillion years, but Xosa's genuine panic tickled Sunkanmi pink. Watching him wrestle with his mistakes in real-time humanized him in more ways than one.
And now that he mentioned it, Xosa did look more ape-like than when they first met in the temple. Simian lines and slopes broadened his facial features, sprinkled with the common ancestor every other human shared. Further from whatever primordial creature the gods fashioned themselves after.
[Gators? Deep-sea-fish? Birds?]
[Certainly nothing mammalian. Too cold.]
Ever the strategist, Sunkanmi chained her laughter in her chest and hedged her bets.
"So, rough estimate, how much longer do you have?"
"Months? Weeks? Days? And if you have your way with my nephew, I'll be stuck like this forever! One form, one body, one life! The horror!"
"It's not all bad," Sunkanmi gestured to Callion, visible through the gritty shop window. Still sleeping deeply, dead to the world around him. "When mortals age, sometimes we lose control of our bowels and soil our pants. Or our hair grays and falls out. Our bones turn brittle and break like ceramic. The luckiest elders just lose their hearing and eyesight, so you have that to look forward to, at least."
"Oh, how mortifying!" Xosa slung his bag over his shoulders and drunkenly staggered down the road, shouting his misery to anyone scared enough to listen. "Eeking out an existence as a mere mortal! Doomed to a fate of my own creation!"
Sunkanmi waited until their chain stretched to its natural limit before following Xosa's warpath. His desperate ranting confirmed her suspicions. In a long string of indignities each designed to inflict more shame than the last, death was the final humiliation.
Humility. Humanity. Humble. Human. Surely they were all related somehow.
Their species wasn't called greatmans or pridemans, after all.
Xosa's reaction proved there was no honor in death. Otherwise, he would've faced it bravely, readily, as a warrior would approach a dark and fearsome cave.
And how awkward for Xosa! For the last millennia, he wondered why humans feared him so, only to dread the apparent reality of dying once it threatened him personally. A mandatory taste of his own bitter medicine.
"Stop your raving," Sunkanmi ordered. "We're not even sure if that's possible."
"We must hurry," wild-eyed and manic, Xosa quickened his pace. "We'll never make it on foot. We must hire a stagecoach immediately. Hark! Where's the nearest stable?"
An innocent bystander stunned that the God of Death asked her for directions, pointed a trembling finger down the right path.
"Bless you, mortal!"
While rounding off the slack in their chain, an epiphany exploded in Sunkanmi's head like a burst flour sack. The irritable bridge between her eyebrows pinched and wavered, threatening to collapse at any moment.
[What's gotten into him?]
Up until Xosa's "Shovel Shenanigans", he appeared perfectly content to anchor Sunkanmi through this disaster until he drowned them both. His sudden switch from nonchalant suicidality to crying for his immortality gave her emotional whiplash so bad it made her head spin.
[Is he...okay?]
Running into the road, Xosa flagged down a weighted stagecoach and lunged for the horse driver's cape.
"We seek safe passage to the nearest House of Reminiscence! Posthaste!"
"Lay off, haba!" The driver yanked her cape out of Xosa's grip, clearly accustomed to deranged customers. "We're heading non-stop to Tunuk within the hour. It's a three-day ride barring any poor weather. You'll have to hike through the evening before you reach the next Memory Temple."
"Let's not delay. Come along, Sunshine!"
"Wait, we don't even-"
"Time waits for no god!" Xosa unceremoniously launched himself into the covered passenger cart, leaving Sunkanmi outside to handle the details.
She shared a blank look with the harried driver before sighing and pinching her nose.
[I will not apologize for him.]
"We have no money on hand to pay you for the journey," Sunkanmi began.
The driver blinked, recognized her rank, and cleared her throat.
"Commander Dayblaze and her guest ride for free. Given you entertain us with a few stories come nightfall."
"My history isn't as riveting as the songs poets sing about it," she warned. "I'm an accomplished woman, but storytelling is not one of my gifts."
"An adventure poured straight from the hero herself will help pass the long hours," the driver tilted her head and squinted through the dust, not unkind. The six chariot horses at her reigns whinnied and stomped impatiently. "Any bit helps."
"Alright," Sunkanmi's lips twitched into the ghost of a smile. "That can be arranged."
Debt settled, she circled the cart, parted the cow-hide flap, and climbed in through the rear.
Sun filtered through the thin animal skin, coloring the interior a golden brown, smelling strongly of cleaned innards and traveling bodies. The cart cover provided much-needed protection from the elements but trapped farts, coughs, and sneezes something awful.
The other passengers, about twelve in total, huddled in their respective corners and conversed lightly in their mother tongues. Luggage demarcated family units and sleeping areas, with tubs of food herded at the center for easy access.
The children, two girls of five and nine years, lit up at Sunkanmi's entrance before their mothers quickly shushed and distracted them.
[Best keep your distance, little ones.]
[Misfortune is contagious.]
Sunkanmi crouched beneath the low ceiling as she crossed the wooden planks like some broken beast. Using their chain as a guide rope, she found a relatively smooth patch of floor and crossed her legs beneath her in a meditative pose.
Face deep in some asinine book, Xosa had already made himself comfortable beneath the driver's perch, satchel tucked under his head.
"Thanks for your help," she growled.
"You're quite welcome," Xosa rolled onto his side and flicked a page. "Now our timeline is three days instead of three weeks. I call that a win."
Their golden chain shrank two links and Sunkanmi realized she was too tired to argue with the unarguable. Xosa's ten-minute fever had already broken, and with transportation lined up to his advantage, the god's ignorant snark returned in spades.
"I still don't understand your fascination with this drivel," Death yawned and spread the book over his face. "It makes a better sleep mask than reading material. At least we're covered if we ever run out of paper to wipe our asses."
"I'm convinced you speak for the sole purpose of hearing your own voice."
"And you would be correct."
Sick of Xosa's shit and unable to cut him in two, Sunkanmi's brain caught up to the conversation and replayed the last few sentences word for word.
[...Drivel?]
Finally registering the book's cover in the lowlight, Sunkanmi's handcuff contracted another five links.
A falling man, dancing in midair.
Feathers.
Faceless.
"Where did you get that?"
Dumb question. She knew damn well where he got it from.
Xosa peeked over the edge, carefully gauging her reaction.
"I lifted it."
Sunkanmi's tongue detached from the root, clean as ice calving from a glacier, and for a while, she just sat there looking at him, mouth closed and cold and wordless.
Maybe this was for the best. Sunkanmi's silences typically indicated deep thought, and she only spoke once certain her words carried the appropriate weight and bite.
So, given this opportunity, she thought. Thought hard.
Because surely Xosa didn't purloin her favorite book for the sole purpose of fucking with her.
Her soulmate wasn't cruel enough to swindle a rare first edition of Songs of Ourselves from someone she considered a friend.
Not even Xosa, who transformed into a bear so his nephew could sleep in comfort, would sink so low.
Not even Xosa, knowing how much it meant to her, would abuse his leverage and threaten to tear every last gold-lined page from the lacing.
[Not even him.]
Maybe I misheard him, she thought. Plus it's dark in here, and I could've misread the title-
For all of Sunkanmi's brilliant calculations and spiraling pathways, when her tongue buttoned back into place she could only manage a soft, burned whisper.
"...you what?"
"I lifted it," Xosa traced a rather lovely illustration of a haggard Goliath named Flint, one of the more controversial characters in Songs of Ourselves. "Not that I have to explain myself to you."
"You mean stole. You stole it."
"Stealing implies I took it without payment. I added a few years to Callion's life as compensation."
Again, Xosa waited for Sunkanmi to wonder how he could do such a thing, even in his reduced state, but instead, their chain buckled until it was only four links long, bruising his arm.
She did not invest delight or curiosity in his actions. Only boredom, ire, and resentment.
Internalizing this, Xosa gathered his confidence and reminded himself that taking Songs of Ourselves was a good idea.
"Either way, I paid for it fair and square, and it's too late to return it."
Sunkanmi's finger pointed dead at his nose. If it was a pistol, she would've shot it.
"You're nothing but a braggart and a low-life thief."
"Your propriety rears its head at the worst times, you know that? You've killed hundreds-"
"-in the name of war. There are still rules I must abide by." Disgusted colored her voice. "It's not my fault I was raised right."
Now it was Xosa's turn to be offended.
"What do you want me to say? 'Sorry I don't have parents'? 'Sorry I wasn't raised'?"
"Actually, you know what? I take it all back." The last two links shrank until their handcuffs kissed, metal on metal, wrist-to-wrist. "Being amassed from the ether sounds like the better deal. You skipped the trauma of birth and don't have to worry about two elders with half of your face passing on and dragging your heart with them. Lucky you, Pear King."
(somehow she made one of my nicer titles sound like an outright insult.)
Slow on his feet, Xosa tried to cut a curse but didn't know how to turn Commander Dayblaze into anything but a commendation. As if he naturally held her rank, and by extension her character, in esteem.
(i don't even know her given name!)
"Just because I created myself doesn't mean I don't have a family. I have a home, even if I'm no longer welcome in it."
Sunkanmi leaned in, ensuring her words landed in his ears only.
"And look how you turned out."
(she...)
Xosa winced violently behind his book, glad for once that gods could not cry.
(she has a point...)
Given the circumstances of his creation, Death always assumed he was at least partially to blame for The Way Things Were.
Before the Celestial Court was a court and before one divinity lorded over Samsxal supreme, Poallu and Laqueheia would argue who came first all the time - Love, Death, or Memory.
But none of them could recall a time when they existed without the others. It seemed as if they always just ...were. It's not like there was some wisened grandparent they could ask, a family tree they could reference, or a mother they could turn to.
Xosa's tattooed hands flattened into his stomach as if he could press wicked, wild emotion out and breathe his numb divinity back in. Hating Sunkanmi only a fraction less than he absolutely despised himself.
(what am i doing?)
Meanwhile, Sunkanmi eyed Songs of Ourselves like she was starved and it was the last bowl of okra in the Republic.
"What are you going to do with it?"
"Who knows?" Xosa swallowed thickly, human eyes gasping for tears that would not come. Imprisoned by immortality.
Nose pressed into the book's cleft, his dry eyelashes dusted against the ink lettering. "Maybe color in it. Maybe donate it to an orphanage. Maybe chuck it in the ocean. It's mine now, so what I choose to do with my book is my business."
"You're right," Sunkanmi tucked in for the long ride. "Congratulations."
Finished twisting the knife, Xosa shuffled to the next chapter and pretended to read. He dreamt of simpler times. Poallu and Laqueheia's voices trickled into his ear and dripped down his elbows like cool rain.
I am the oldest, said Laqueheia, for you cannot lament a lover's death if you do not remember them.
Don't be foolish, said Poallu. Love is the spark of all life and thus the beginning of all thought. Life necessitates death. Therefore, I was the first.
Death, floating quietly between them, could've argued his case till the end of the time. But for once in his short, unremarkable existence, he held his peace.
He knew he was the eldest of the three.
Because without him there was nothing to love
nothing to mourn
and
nothing
nothing
nothing to remember.
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