[Closed] [Mature] Dancing After Death

[Tom Cooke]

Riverside in the Three Flowers

Evening on the 38th of Loshis, 2720

A
remu was smiling; his own smile broadened, though it was no less sheepish.

It still seemed to him uncertain footing. There was no need to say, Love, I’m a whoreson who grew up in the gutters. They’d both known that for some time, and somehow he thought Aremu would object to the phrasing. He supposed he objected to a handful of Aremu’s phrasings, so it was only fair.

The smile still surprised him. He’d expected, wading deeper into the water, to step off one stone and find nothing underfoot. To slip and get whisked away by the current, dashed on the rocks somewhere. It was – at least – no longer that he thought himself unworthy of an educated, worldly man: what Aremu saw in him he didn’t know, but he thought there was worldliness in him Aremu admired, too.

But it still felt strange to speak of. Full of surprises, maybe, and differences. “I stole wallets for a living at nine” had seemed damned coarse, for all he couldn’t’ve thought of any way to talk around it, for all Aremu had smiled tenderly, as if to – encourage him.

Aremu was shifting, it seemed to him, uncomfortably. He opened his mouth as if to speak, then hesitated, and Tom’s heart gave a tiny lurch. The other man was looking down at his bowl.

When he did speak a moment later, meeting his eye, it took him by surprise. I didn’t know you had a brother, he wanted to say.

Tutored at home, Aremu said, thoughtfully but matter-of-factly; he expected to feel a prickle of self-consciousness, but he couldn’t seem to. If it was hard for him to imagine, he tried anyway.

A brother, a little older; he found himself picturing Aremu, but – wrapped in white like an arata, teaching, maybe, at Thul’amat, or working as an official somewhere. And the both of them as boys, richly-dressed, in some –

He found himself picturing the Vauquelin house, even though he tried hard to shake the image off. A somber-looking lad with Aremu’s thoughtful eyes climbing the spiral staircase up to the study, or to his brother’s room, with none of the joy he climbed cliffs or trees. Except he pictured everything white, polished-white calypt, and the river-breeze almost made him shiver.

Aremu had paused, as if something had got stuck. He went on, looking up at him and finding a smile. He knew the shape of that smile, like he knew the shape of the name Aremu didn’t say.

He smiled back, warmly. “Yes,” he said softly, “you did.” The tenderness was almost unbearable; he couldn't think what was in his eyes, couldn't bear to.

He looked down, then wiped his hands off and reached for his tea. “My brother –” He went on, “His name is Clark. We were – when we were boys, we were close. He was sickly, then. I remember him gentle and kind,” and he took a sip of tea, thinking for a moment, “maybe too much so for the Rose. He got work at the docks, last I heard; a good man.”

The moon had been a vague glow on the horizon; now, it poked its pale head up, and the ripples on the river were silvery. The river-bugs were loud.

“I didn’t have much fami by blood.” He smiled. “But you know, Dee –”

He paused, more out of surprise than hesitation. He’d mentioned her once or twice, he thought, telling her stories; he’d never actually… “Deirdre was one of the women I grew up with. All of them raised me, but her – I don’t share a whit of blood with her, especially not now. But I’d wager there’s more of her in me than blood could give, and I’m grateful, too.”

[Aremu Ediwo]

Late Evening, 38 Loshis, 2720
Riverside, Three Flowers

Aremu’s smile softened, too, when Tom smiled back at him, and he turned the other man’s words over in his chest, clutching tightly to them. For all that Tom had only repeated what he said, Aremu thought, there was a weight to it. He knew well that the words he spoke had no weight of truth to them, whatever else they might serve for. Even said so, quietly, simply – three words – in the midst of Tom’s field, there was a weight to them, and it was one that settled over Aremu, and one he was glad to bear.

And a sister-in-law, still, he almost could have said, but he thought they had come to a comfortable place on the subject of Niccolette, without the need for much in the way of discussion. Her affairs were her own; to speak too much of her, Aremu felt, would be to offer something which was not his to share. And yet – difficult, he thought wryly, though she could be, she was his sister, and he knew she thought him her brother. He did not think he could have asked for more.

Aremu tried to place Clark into what he’d seen of Tom’s life, all those years ago in the Rose – into Tom sitting on the railing at the edge of the pier, drinking Low Tide and watching for lighting on the horizon; into Tom and Jaeli’s quiet house in Quarter Fords, the garden of sage and mint and junia and other plants beside; into the scar he remembered in the thicket of the beard on Tom’s throat, still red and angry when he’d first seen it, and he’d never known whether the hair had grown back to cover it in time; into the moonlight arch of a stone bridge beneath the city, surrounded by qinnab and eza, breathy voices raised and low alike in pleasure and other, stranger things.

When we were boys, Tom had said, we were close, and Aremu thought he understood.

There was a warm, fond smile on Tom’s face when he went on, and Aremu listened, rapt; he’d left aside his food, taking only a small sip of tea. Just then, he thought, he didn’t have the attention to spare for both.

I didn’t know, Aremu wanted to say, when we met – to look at you – I didn’t know. I still don’t, he wanted to say, I suppose, know much of Anaxas or what it’s like there, for all the time I’ve spent in the Rose or Vienda, and I know even less of what it’s like to grow up as you did. I want to know, Aremu wanted to say, but he thought he’d already said it; he thought he was saying it even now, because he’d found himself leaning forward, just a little – more, he knew, than he should.

Aremu shifted back on his stool, and nodded, because all he could think to say tasted hollow and strange on his tongue. They stay with us, he wanted to say, even when we’re apart; blood, he wanted to say, isn’t all the only part of a man which binds.

He had nothing more concrete to offer; he did not know what it was his brother did, today. To say aloud that he had not seen him in coming up on nineteen years seemed, to Aremu, to add nothing to the conversation, and to all which they had shared.

“You can eat the dzira’dzuru,” Aremu said instead, with a smile, “if you like. It needs only to come out of the shell,” he took his own out, and showed Tom with easy, deft movements of his fingers, stripping the half-translucent shell from the river bug and leaving it on his plate. He didn’t bother with the tsoq’ud for it. It was damp with the broth already, still steaming very faintly into the air, rich and buttery, and tasted – in the best way, Aremu would have said – of the river itself.

[Tom Cooke]

Riverside in the Three Flowers

Evening on the 38th of Loshis, 2720

A
remu had leaned forward a little, though he’d said nothing; when he looked up from his tea, it was to find a smile still hanging about the other man’s face, curiosity still bright in his eyes. But he eased back then, stool creaking against the boards.

Sounds swept into the quiet: the water lapping at the supports, the insects’ song. The footfalls of duri up and down the docks, quiet chatter in Mugrobi made echoing and strange by bouncing off the river – or suddenly the sharp hiss of batter hitting the pan, along with it the smell of frying oil, sometimes of burning. Laughter, a whistle. Boats further out on the water, sounds he knew better, creaking, the calls of fishermen, clanging. River-birds he didn’t know the names of, some he could see glossy-winged under the moon, but just flashes against the dark sky.

He’d got caught up in talk, and he’d left off his food; so had Aremu. The other man wasn’t frowning, but he wasn’t sure how to read his smile now.

Maybe we shouldn’t’ve, he thought, but the thought had nowhere to go. I don’t think anybody here would guess, he thought. These folk aren't paying attention to how we look at each other, or what we say; we’re a passing curiosity here, and more me than you. I’ve heard at least one dura point out the red pepper, in the time since we got ourselves seated.

Don’t worry, he wanted to say, mung. He felt tongue-tied, because he wasn’t exactly sure what to tell him not to worry about, and he didn’t know if he had the right, besides.

We don’t have to speak more of, he thought to come at it directly. More of what? Your past, or mine? And had he put pressure on Aremu to stir waters he'd rather've left settled?

He shifted on his stool, reaching for a round of tsoq’ud. There’d been nothing but interest, nothing but fondness, in Aremu’s eyes. He knew Aremu, he reminded himself: he knew his quietness and the space between his heart and his words. But there were many kinds of quietness.

A spark of a smile caught him; he blinked, eyes flicking down to watch Aremu take the – dzira’dzuru, he called it, and Tom remembered.

He was smiling, too. He watched Aremu take it apart one-handed, deft and graceful; it glistened pale orange, sent up a little tendril of steam. Still watching, he reached for his own rightaway. He glanced between Aremu’s hand and his, finding the seam between the broth-damp legs, crackling the shell open and sliding it off without much trouble. Inside, it was hot enough almost to burn his fingertips; he blew on it and bit in, with only a moment’s hesitation.

It was warm and buttery, but there was a taste underneath it that reminded him of how the Turga smelled. “I don’t suppose,” he murmured after a moment, using a piece of tsoq’ud to help a little tomato onto what was left of the dzira’dzuru, “this is a Muluku ingredient?”

He wiped his hands off after he’d finished with it, then grinned, glancing up at Aremu. For a moment, he hesitated. He could’ve asked more, he thought; he could’ve gone on talking; he felt an ache of curiosity, and he didn’t know where to put it.

“You said you’d never had isles food before that summer,” he said, glancing up again, unable to hide the curiosity in his eyes. “What did you grow up eating?”

[Aremu Ediwo]

Late Evening, 38 Loshis, 2720
Riverside, Three Flowers

Aremu grinned. “No,” he said, smiling, having watched Tom take apart the dzira’dzuru as if his slim, freckled hands had never shaken; for all the thin shell was gleaming with the tam’oqap, he didn’t see any pale yellow-orange drops fly free to settle on Tom’s crisp white clothing, cast yellow in the lamplight.

“There are smaller shellfish which grow around the islands,” Aremu said instead, smiling, “and clams and mussels, but nothing so large.” When you come back, he wanted to say, and he swallowed the words. “In most of the ports you can find quick fried clams and mussels,” Aremu said, a little fondly, “breaded with a heavy hand of spice, fried and served in a twist of paper.”

Aremu pried the last of the rich meat from his shell, fingers tugging and twisting lightly; he ate it, and wiped his hand clean, and reached for another tsoq’ud. They were not as warm as they had been; when he broke it open, only a little steam leaked into the cool river air. It was still soft, though, spongy white beneath the slightly too brown exterior, and soaked up the tam’oqap as well as it ever had.

The question, when it came, caught him by surprise. Aremu glanced up, a little unsure; he blinked, and he knew it, and he set the bit of tsoq’ud aside, and wiped his hand.

It’s common, he thought to say, even in Thul Ka – even at the top of Cinnamon Hill – for what one eats at home to be a reflection of the origins of one’s family. Something of a variety, he thought to say, for all I’d never had islands food, and for all Anaxi food is not very popular in Mugroba, after all.

“Tsia’tsia,” Aremu said, instead, his lips a little tight; he wanted to look down at the bowl, or away across the river, or, really, anywhere else. He looked at Tom, instead, his eyes searching the other man’s face. Tom was watching him through the lamplight, and it gleamed in the other man’s pale gray eyes. “And other preparations of cassava. Usually with fish or groundnuts, or sometimes goat or lamb or chicken, all stewed.”

“All my family is from Northern Mugroba,” Aremu added, carefully, his voice even, “though both sides had been in Thul Ka for some time.”

He heard the tightness in himself; he felt it, he thought, uneasily, in the shoulders and down the set of his spine. He didn’t want it to be there, and he knew Tom must have seen it too; he was past thinking he could hide, so, from the other man. Perhaps – perhaps, Aremu thought, uneasily – he was past wanting to hide, so.

He cleared his throat, uncertain; he felt his gaze wanting to lower again, and he let it, for just a moment, looking down at the table. If he could have managed it, he thought, he should tell some story, some…

“The blame does not fall on them,” Aremu said, quietly, a little unevenly. He couldn’t look at Tom, now; his gaze felt locked on the bowls of tam’oqap, glinting with the lamplight, on the bits of tsoq’ud around them, the translucent fishshells. He felt strangely apart from himself; some corner of him was conscious of the hum of conversation all around, of the distant splash of the river and the crackle of tsoq’ud frying.

“The fault was in me,” Aremu said, quiet still; he couldn’t remember ever speaking such words before, though he’d known them in himself as long as he’d known what he was, “even if it wasn’t of my choosing. I wasn’t the son they had thought I was, and,” his shoulders jerked in a sudden, tight motion; his jaw tightened, and relaxed, and he forced the fingers of his left hand apart where they’d tightened against the cloth he used to clean them.

He looked up again, and tried to smile for Tom, although he knew there was something of a frown in his brow. I don’t, he wanted to say, usually speak of it; I know there isn’t any point. I know you didn’t ask; you didn’t make me tell you. The words crowded together, pressing against one another, and none won out in the end; there was only the faint, crooked smile on his lips, and whatever it was of all the rest which shone through in his eyes.

[Tom Cooke]

Riverside in the Three Flowers

Evening on the 38th of Loshis, 2720

H
e found he could almost taste it. He could remember, too, the smells drifting in through the coach windows on the Yaris breeze. He could imagine now where they came from, breaded clams dunked in oil, hissing. When we go, he wanted to say, already almost grinning. He could see the fondness in Aremu’s eyes, like a reflection of another place. Aremu had come to love the isles, he thought; he’d thought so even then, watching him among the tsug, and it’d seemed a new and wonderful part of him, a part the Aremu he’d known once hadn’t had. A part he’d wanted, then thinking himself hopeless, to learn.

To be there with you, he wanted to say. Just you and me and the evening markets, the food I only got a hint of out the coach windows – without the dread we both remember…

It’ll be strange for you, still, he’d been thinking, wiping the broth from his fingers. We’ll have the house to go back to, but there are still masks we’ll have to wear, out there. And what about with ada’na Ahura? Nothing but ourselves in that house, and she comes round, and you think you can look at me like a polite stranger, like you did once, when we’d only slept together one tentative night?

The thought had dampened him, and all the words had got scrambled halfway to his tongue. Let me decide, Aremu had said once, and more since. If you’ve decided to love me, he thought now, you’ve chosen strangeness and risk.

He asked a different question instead of all the others.

He might’ve known, before Aremu spoke. He felt the stirring of that same curiosity he’d felt in Slowwater, eyes brightening even as his brow knit. His fingers came to rest round his cup of tea, though it was empty by now and he didn’t make to pour more, rapt.

Northern Mugroba, he said, and he might’ve guessed. He remembered the taste of groundnut and tsia’tsia, warm as a hearth.

It seemed to Tom it started in his lips, the soft curl of them evening out to a line. All the curves of Aremu straightened out, at times like this. He became a man of straight lines: the line of his back, the line of his shoulders, the line that worked its way in between his eyebrows, the lines above it on his forehead. The handcloth was full of lines, where the fingers of Aremu’s left hand were tight in it.

Aremu cleared his throat, and then the brittle line broke. He knew what he was talking about before he went on; he could feel his own lips pressing thin, the fingers of one hand curling against the tabletop. When he’d finished speaking, the other man was smiling at him, a little. He could see by the way his shoulders had jumped that his muscles were already wound tight again.

“Aremu,” he said softly, and the rest of the words caught. He wanted to reach out and take his hand more than anything.

He felt a sharp, hot spur of anger, too. No? he wanted to demand. They get a son that’s not what they expect, so he’s not their son anymore, just like that. After ten years. My father, he wanted to say, at least had the decency to disappear before he even knew the tumble was in the family way. Ten years? I had killed a man by sixteen, and my fami never forsook me.

If I had a boch, who - if she -

He swallowed tightly. His anger didn’t feel useful. This is what you think of, something else whispered, when you think of tsia’tsia and lamb and groundnut sauce. His sadness didn’t feel useful, either.

He took a deep breath. “I want to respect you,” he said, “but I don’t agree.” His lips twitched; it wasn’t quite a smile. “I do not see this fault in you,” he said very, very softly, his eyes moving over Aremu’s face, his lips twitching closed before they could say what he shouldn’t say in public.

I grew up with a similar dish, some mad part of him wanted to go on, as if he hadn’t said anything. A sort of boiled cornmeal from Bastia…

Instead, he reached for the teapot. He eyed the cooling dregs in Aremu’s cup and went to pour more. I love you, he tried to say with his hands, two steady fingers pressed against the lid of the teapot. Lifting the spout up so the tea poured down in a thin stream, careful not to spill any.

[Aremu Ediwo]

Late Evening, 38 Loshis, 2720
Riverside, Three Flowers

Tom said his name; Aremu looked at him, still, and said nothing. He didn’t know what to read into the shadows the lamplight cast onto the other man’s face, the harshness of the thin line of his lips, the look about his eyes that might have been brittle – impatient – angry – sad. Aremu wasn’t sure what he himself felt; he wasn’t sure what was written on the lines of his face, in the tight ache in his forehead, in the smile which slipped like water through his fingers as he tried to hold on.

He could have filled in the look half a dozen ways; he could have filled it in half a dozen more. I know, he half-heard, in the cool, even tones of Tom’s Vienda accent; I never thought it did. I understand, he half-heard, now, why they would.

Even as he imagined the words he knew they didn’t fit; it wasn’t a sneer in the lines around Tom’s mouth, and he knew them too well to see it now. Flooding laoso, some part of him imagined, in a drawl the Rose, and somehow that made his shoulders ache even tighter. Don’t, he wanted to say, don’t imagine you’re taking my side against them; I don’t have a side, in this, Tom. One doesn’t – without honor –

When Tom did speak, it was quiet, and nothing Aremu knew how to answer, for all his imaginings. They had spoken of respect before; this, then, was the same argument, Aremu thought, as they’d had in Brunnhold. In Vienda, too, Aremu thought, and he found to his surprise it was with the faintest hint of a smile, though he couldn’t have said why. Maybe it was because there had been – they had had that argument in Vienda, Aremu thought, and they had neither of them understood it, and they had held together through it regardless, and come around to speaking of it in Brunnhold, man to man, and it was more than he could have hoped for.

Don’t you see it? Aremu wanted to ask, again. You must feel it – here, at this distance, we’re not far enough to pretend I’m anything other than what I am. Look at my clothing, Tom; look at me. You know what I am; you can see it in what I wear, and feel it in the lack in the air all around me.

Tom reached for the teapot, filling his cup up once more; steam whirled into the air between them again, curled and turned, whisking in on itself and back out once more. Aremu blinked, and it was only a thin coil between them. He watched Tom set the teapot down, and reached out, and stopped short of the cup.

You see it, he wanted to say; you must. The challenge would be to call Tom a liar, and that stuck in his throat, and he couldn’t bear the words. He wanted to offer him a correction; what you mean, Aremu wanted to say, careful and precise, is that you don’t mind this fault in me. That’s what you mean. You must see it. Or is it a play on see? Perhaps; you didn’t say you don’t feel this fault in me. His throat ached, and he cleared it, painfully, and finished reaching for the cup, taking a small sip of it, fragrant and cool at once.

They did, he wanted to say, then. Others do too. You’re the exception, Tom, not the rule.

“It is there,” Aremu said, instead, quieter still than before; he looked at Tom, now and for all that his lips twitched at a smile, he was brutally aware of the warmth behind his eyes, “nonetheless.”

We shouldn’t talk about this here, he wanted to say, then, suddenly; he knew it for shutting down the conversation, and yet he still wanted to say it. Of all the unwise things we’ve done here, he wanted to say, let’s not add this to the list. We’ll talk about it later, he wanted to lie, for he thought there was little he would have liked less to discuss, for all he knew he had brought it up.

I only wanted you to understand, he wanted to say, sharply, selfishly; I didn’t mean for you to disagree. I want to know you do understand, Tom, because – because otherwise, Aremu wanted to say, the words sharp and painful, scratching in his chest, I live afraid that you’ll realize, one day, what you’ve refused to see.

[Tom Cooke]

Riverside in the Three Flowers

Evening on the 38th of Loshis, 2720

I
t is there nonetheless, he said.

Are you, he wanted to say sharply, calling me a liar? Dove?

It was cruel. More, it was petty. He could’ve said it; godsdamn, but he could’ve, and even as his hands came away from the teapot it was on the very edge of his tongue. He was surprised at himself, and that might’ve been the only thing that kept him from saying it.

He’d thought, for a moment, Aremu might argue, before he’d said it. His hand had twitched, halfway to the cup; he’d made as if to say something, then stopped. He’d lifted the cup to his lips, then, and there’d been only that quiet motion, Tom watching him still, the crickets singing.

But no. Aremu hadn’t called him a liar, in the end, after all. The logic was unmistakably sound: he could follow it, and that was the worst part. There was something about it that made him want to smile – absurdly – something about the fact that he knew him well enough by now to know what he meant, to see the footprints and follow them, to look up the cliff and know how he was going to climb it.

It was the top he couldn't see. It’s not fair, he wanted to say, peevishly. I’m not Mugrobi enough for this.

He could follow it, still. I don’t see it, he’d said; it’s there anyway, Aremu’d replied. It, the fault, Aremu had said, is there, even if you can’t see it.

Aremu was comfortably in his field: he could feel him there, that subtle brush of him. And all around them the clairvoyant mona, alive and moving, one solitary field. I see that, he thought, and you know it. So what don’t you think I see?

“Then where –” He shouldn’t have blurted it out. His hands had gone back to his cup, still sending up a swirl of steam where he’d filled it back up. His fingers had twitched restlessly round the rim, danced away to tap on the table, moved back as if to take a sip – flinched away, finally, twitching. Useless.

What the hell had he meant to say, with that? Where is it? He wanted to flinch away from it. He knew; he thought he didn’t want to hear.

The answers crowded his head. No honor, no soul…

Yes, he wanted to shoot back, acidic again; yes, it’s there, and I don’t see it. We both know how little I know of honor, and we both know my soul is an unraveling mess. I wouldn’t know either if they were right in front of me, and that’s why what they mean to me means nothing to you.

He looked across at Aremu, through the thinning steam. The other man was dry-eyed, but he could see it breaking up the line. The faint warning redness at the edges of the whites of them. There was a smile on his lips, and it looked to him like Aremu was trying to hold up the whole moon with the muscles of his face.

He didn’t look round. He could hear soft laughter from further down the dock, and more creaking, though it’d quieted from earlier. The lad hadn’t been out of the shack in a while. The breeze lapped and played in the Turga, sloshing against the pier.

I’m not trying to argue, he wanted to say. But what else could I have said? Nothing, and have you think I agree with them? Nothing, when the truth of my heart –

He shouldn’t’ve started speaking, anyway. Two godsdamned words. Easy enough to take back. Tell one of those funny stories you’re so damned good at telling, he thought.

“You told me you felt as if I saw you.” Transparent, he thought. The exact wording threatened to sour, now, if he looked too close at it. “I think I see you,” he added, quiet. Can a man love what he can’t see?

[Aremu Ediwo]

Late Evening, 38 Loshis, 2720
Riverside, Three Flowers

Something jerked through Aremu’s whole body, a small motion stifled as quickly as he made it. His breath hummed in and out, and the edge of a rasp to it faded with the clearing of his throat. The Turga lapped at the pillars beneath them, and the distant sounding of night bugs felt unbearably loud. There was a burst of laughter, and yet Aremu didn’t look from Tom; he couldn’t bear to.

We both know I’m a liar, Aremu wanted to say.

I thought, Aremu wanted to say, you did.

Neither was right, not quite, because there was a tension in Tom which he could nearly see - which he could see, in the twitching of the other man’s fingers, in the brittle set of his lips. He felt it in him too, in the tingling behind his eyes and the cracking of all of him through the heart.

A man may be like a pool, he wanted to say, absurdly. Perhaps you think me deep, when I am only rain water on the surface of the desert, and do not know if I shall withstand the heat of the sun.

What there is of me to see.

That, he thought, he could have said. It was careful; it was like the small incremental words they had offered back and forth in the wake of his clarification. You see me, Aremu wanted to say, but do you know that what there is of me is only clinging to the edges of the emptiness within?

“You asked me,” Aremu’s voice came out hoarse; he shifted, and took a sip of the tea Tom had so carefully poured, and cleared his throat, “when we first met,” Aremu said, quietly, “if there was a term for those like me.”

It was a fond smile on his lips then; it ached, somewhere tender, and his eyes burned all the worse. He breathed in, deeply and evenly. I didn’t tell you, then, that imbala itself means incapable, he wanted to say; I wanted to let you call me something you thought kind.

“I hid in half-truths,” Aremu went on, quiet still, “because I thought you would want nothing of me if you knew the whole. I did not think I could be the one to explain,” his fingers jerked, and tightened.

Do you remember, he wanted to say, that night with Ipadi...? I told him not yet - absurd, as if given time I would have found courage I do not possess. We both know I turned away, instead.

“Even now,” Aremu’s voice rasped; he cleared his throat and it seemed to make no difference. “Even now,” he tried again, and if anything he thought it worse than before.

Don’t you see? Aremu wanted to say. We met Tsofo today; how can you, still, think me worthy of your love? He knew; I was a boy then and I thought if I loved him, it could be enough. I thought I learned, then, not to long for what couldn’t be, and yet here I am, desperately hopeful and willing to believe.

His breath rasped, too; Aremu blinked, slowly and evenly, shepherding away the tears.

“There is a part of me glad you do not see,” Aremu said, as evenly as he could; he blinked away another few years, and waited, despairing, for the feel of moisture in his face, “and there is a part of me afraid of what it will mean if you do. Coward and fool that I am, I would -“ he took another deep breath, pressing through steadily, dry eyed or close enough, for now, sitting above the waters of the Turga.

“I would,” Aremu went on, picking up again the thread which he had lost, doing his best to finish what he had begun, “still take all which you could offer.”

[Tom Cooke]

Riverside in the Three Flowers

Evening on the 38th of Loshis, 2720

H
e remembered. The brittle line of his own lips broke.

I was drunk when I said that, he got the oddest urge to say. Why would you have cared if I wanted you? Drunkard, whoreson – there are a lot of terms for what I am, too. Even more, now. They write horror novels about things like me, Aremu; I can show you them.

Aremu broke off. He glanced down without meaning to, catching the sharp jerk of Aremu’s hand, its long-fingered shadow flickering over the table.

Even now, Aremu said, then repeated, Even now, forcing the words out in a rasp.

His hands came away from the cup and folded on the tabletop. Again, he was afraid what they might do, if given free rein. He glanced down at Aremu’s hand one last time, and it was almost unbearable, so he looked back at his face. In time to watch him blink and blink again, the whites of his eyes dark now, but nothing gleaming on his cheeks.

“If I do,” he repeated quietly, when Aremu’d been silent long enough he knew he wasn’t going to speak again.

He blinked himself. He didn’t think Aremu would want them seen weeping in a place like this; that would’ve been a fine addition to an evening he was already doing his damnedest to ruin. It was a comfortable sort of pain, like straining a muscle, to hold his field indectal around them.

If I do, he thought emptily. You’d still take…

I don’t want you to be ready at any moment to start taking the scraps from under the table, he wanted to demand suddenly, as if angry, and be grateful for them, like a – like a street boch loving the man who beats him because he’s got someplace to rest his head. His brow furrowed and his lips moved, staring at Aremu’s face, but nothing came out.

If Aremu was struggling, he knew himself to be worse at holding in tears by far. He blinked and blinked again, looking down. Only looking down never helped, on account of whatever it was held men to Vita and made physical conversationalists a fortune, and dragged tears down cheeks; so he caught himself and looked up instead, ‘til he’d mastered himself, or near enough.

He murmured before he could stop, “What would I have to offer, if I…”

What would I want of you, if I didn’t want the whole? What kind of man would, he almost started, emptily. Rather stupidly, too, it would’ve been.

You think, after all this, I could go back to treating you like a stranger I occasionally fuck? (Worse – he thought he was beginning to imagine what Aremu had in mind.) If I lost any part of you, of this, do you think I wouldn’t grieve it like death?

“There was a lot I didn’t understand, back then,” he said instead, running a hand along his jaw, “and a lot more I understand, now. Maybe I – Maybe I do see it, in a way. Maybe I see something.”

He’d seen Aremu flinch, jerk, at the sound of laughter behind, though it’d been nothing to him but a burble down the pier, an echo off the water. He was afraid speaking more of it here would do more harm than good, but to break off now felt like closing a door it had spilled their blood to open.

In the pause, he found himself sucking at his tooth. “Come,” he said, “I want to – I don’t think it’s comfortable for you, talking about this here. Let’s finish, get our strength up, take the back streets back, talk.” And I will talk, I can promise you that, if it’s all I do.

[Aremu Ediwo]

Late Evening, 38 Loshis, 2720
Riverside, Three Flowers

Aremu put it out into the air between them, alongside the drifting smells of tam’oqap, cooler now with the brush of river air against it, laid it amidst the chatter and laughter, boat sounds and bug sounds, settled it in the dim lantern light that cast Tom’s face in shade and shadow. He felt as if he’d said this before, though perhaps never so clearly, though perhaps never so that Tom had truly understand.

Whatever else was on the other man’s face, Aremu thought, he understood, now. He felt a churning ache in his stomach, a tightness; now you know, he wanted to say, what Tsofo was to me, and what I was to him. Now you know. This, too, he thought, was a kind of seeing, and he wasn’t sure that he could bear it – but it was too late, because he’d already shown Tom all that there was to see.

If I do, Tom said, quietly.

There was silence between them a little while longer. Aremu blinked, and blinked again, and waited, thinking to feel the tears on his cheeks, though he would have thought he had cried himself dry, sobbing into Tom’s arms on the edge of the bed not a house ago. He supposed he knew better, by now. His eyes prickled and ached, dry and hot all at once, but if tears threatened, they didn’t fall. Across the table he thought he saw a gleam of moisture in Tom’s eyes too, but nothing which came loose, in the end.

Maybe I do see it, Toms said, hesitant; maybe I see something.

Aremu shuddered, though he tried to catch it. This is what you wanted, he told himself; didn’t you want to know he saw it? Don’t go on, he wanted to beg; just leave it there, Tom, please – just – don’t tell me what we both already know. Don’t make me hear it in your voice.

Tom went on, and it wasn’t quite what he expected; it wasn’t what he feared, and he wasn’t sure it was what he wanted. It hurt; this hurt, all of it, and he didn’t know what was on the other side, what sort of wound would be revealed by the bandage they were, the two of them, steadily picking away: whether it would suppurate and rot or whether he’d find it ready for the healing brush of the open air.

Aremu nodded, because he did not quite trust himself to speak. He thought to say he couldn’t eat anymore; he’d felt a telltale tingling in his jaw, somewhere along the way. When he looked back down at the tam’oqap, the discarded tsoq’ud, he found he could, after all. He reached for the spongy circle of bread; he fished up a bit of white fish, pale and flaky, all it and the dough drenched in the rich yellow-orange broth, smelling of tamarind and coriander and a host of other spices.

He ate as if he thought of nothing else; he was good at it. It wasn’t a mechanical eating, or an eating which lacked enjoyment, but it was focused and measured, and he didn’t try, again, to speak. I’m not sure, he wanted to say, once, with his mouth full, that there’s more to say on it. He was glad of the denseness of the tsoqud, then, or something in him was, because by the time he’d finished the mouthful, the urge to speak had gone.

He finished the bowl before him, tipping it up to drink the last of the broth, a last slippery piece of tomato too; Aremu set it down, and wiped his hand clean, and drank the last of his tea, too. He felt – not full, perhaps, but close enough, and certainly no longer hungry. He looked at Tom, again; he hadn’t avoided looking at him, precisely, but perhaps he hadn’t looked, either, not really. He smiled, just a little, despite everything, though it ached in the tight-held muscles of his face.

They paid, and left with a shouted goodbye from the boy, who was already sweeping up the metal bowls; they drifted away from the lantern lights on the pier, back down to the paved road which ran along the riverside. There weren’t many phosphor lights, here, but for the occasional wash of blue at the edge of a pier; there were lanterns, instead, or some at least, hung along the edges of buildings on hooks. Ready, Aremu thought to say, to be taken up if the floods came. He stopped at one, burning steadily, which was half rust, looking at the flaky color against the metal.

What do you understand? Aremu wanted to ask. What do you see? He turned, looking at Tom from the circle of the light; he couldn’t find it in himself to speak, but he could come closer – one step, and then another, until he was close enough for his fingers to brush the back of the other man’s hand. “I’m sorry,” Aremu said. “I didn’t mean to bring this up. It’s all right, where we are. I don’t mean to push you.”