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Monoco heard the sharp intake of breath before the colour bled back into the world. He’d been stuck in the girl’s time lock enough times to recognise the sticky slowness as reality bent back into shape. It wasn’t dissimilar to an ancient sequence of images buried deep under the jumbled boxes of his memories. A time before time, between time, the formless moments among the slivers of his maker’s presence.
The sound of Verso’s gasp echoed through the unnatural silence. Monoco tried to move, his joints slow to respond as he twisted towards the Reacher. His chroma senses felt the presence of the humans behind him before his peripheral vision kicked in. Verso’s form the most familiar, solid and dark, flecked through with gold. Alicia’s chroma had always been brighter, like silver spider threads spun into a sparkling pile of barbe-a-papa. But another subsumed her; a brilliant, blinding flash of copper fire rippling out from Maelle. The waves of chroma superimposed on the reflected light of the Canvas finally reaching his painted eyes.
Verso started forwards and Monoco felt the crack of paint as his long legs fought against the time hold. Monoco’s wood creaked as he gripped his staff, the knocker of his bell shifting languidly to strike the metal with a muffled ring.
At the edge of the mountain, a swirl of blood red petals surrounded the girls. An imperfect mirror of each other; he had lain quietly, looking at the stars, and wondered which were the most real. Maelle was, of course, the real Paintress. But her false form was a mockery of reality. While Alicia, sweet Alicia, wore the scars her counterpart could not bear.
Eighty years is enough time to get used to the way things are. Even if you don’t want to.
The thought skittered across his consciouness as time sped up. Verso moved in slow motion towards the blur of chroma and roses. His face twisted as a cry left his throat, and Monoco felt it reverberate through his mask, a pulse of pain and fear.
“ALICIAAA! NO!”
Wind ruffled his fur and carried the crimson petals towards the sky. Maelle stood, alone, hand outstretched. There was a flash of white as the fine ceramic mask tumbled over and over, hitting the dusty stone with a crystalline sound as it shattered.
Verso collapsed to his knees, scrabbling for the pieces.
“NO, no, no…no, please. Alicia, no…” His voice was strained. Monoco strode towards the pair, his joints suddenly fluid again. Around him the Expeditioners blinked and looked at each other, harmless as kittens in their shallow understanding of the world they inhabited. Verso’s back was rounded, his face pressed to the floor. “Please, no, why…why?”
His bell clanged as he dropped it to the floor, spreading his broad hands over Verso’s shoulders. His human shook under his touch, and he felt a dark twisting in his chest. He curled his fingers around Verso’s skinny biceps, squeezing gently. Verso’s heart beat loudly through Monoco’s heart wood bones, a sense honed over decades of closeness. A sob wracked through the man’s chest, his fingers bleeding where the sharp edges of Alicia’s mask dug into pale flesh. The blood smeared over the white ceramic, gathering in the gilding that once embellished the surface in an effigy of life. Monoco looked up at the Paintress, his gravelly voice edged with scorn.
“Why?”
Maelle’s eyes went round, the hardness draining from her face. A blush rose to her freckled cheeks, mirroring the blaze of her hair.
“I…I…had…to,” she stuttured and moved towards them. Monoco held up a hand, wide palm facing her, and she faltered. Her chin wobbled as she spoke. “Don’t you see Monoco? I had to, we have to win and…”
“There are many ways to win… Paintress.” He dropped his attention back towards Verso, who leaned against his trunk. His wooden heart twisted in his chest, the sharp memory of Noco’s death piercing him through as he watched his best friend crumble in grief. He felt his ribs crack open, as though they would spew dark ichor that could fill the gaping maw in Verso’s soul, the sister-shaped blankness that roared for all her absence. He willed his wood to grow, to bend and twist into a thick canopy, that he might twine his roots around Verso’s limbs and hold him closer than their insufficient human and puppet bodies ever could.
The dust was wet with tears and blood, gathering in the folds of Verso’s trousers where he knelt. He held the gathered pieces of white, gold, and red, gobbets of spittle and snot mixing with the tears that ran over his hands. Gently, Monoco cradled Verso’s hands in his own, running his thumbs over the exposed expanse of his wrists.
“Mon Verso” his voice was low. He heard the others shifting about, but their actions now concerned him not at all. All he could see was Verso’s roiling grief twisting the chroma around him. A wail escaped the man’s throat as he pitched forward, his forehead knocking against Monoco’s mask.
“Monoco?” It was Lune, her voice close beside them. “I can heal his hands.”
“No need,” Monoco replied. Verso pawed at him, daubing his ruff red.
The Gestral stilled and tilted his wooden face towards her, the set of it hard and determined enough to translate to even the inexperienced humans. Lune pursed her lips and nodded.
“Let’s go. I want us off the mountain by nightfall.”
“But…Lune, I need to see if there’s any other useful chroma here!” Said Maelle.
“I said, we get off the mountain.” Lune slowly put her hands to her hips. “I am still commander of this Expedition. We leave now.” She spun on her heel, followed quickly by Sciel. Maelle stood for a moment, hands fisted tightly, before following with heavy steps.
Monoco folded himself around Verso, pulling him into his lap. His human seemed suddenly frail as he shook in the crook of his wooden arms. Verso’s breath came in broken gulps, the sound raking through Monoco’s barrel chest. He was sure that his sap, coursing under the knarled surface of his bark, thrummed red as blood through the rays and pores of his heartwood. He rocked Verso back and forth, humming into his sweaty hair.
“Shhhh, mon coeur, shhhh…”
The sun wheeled overhead in its incessant cycle until the sky faded and pin pricks of light dusted the velvet blue. Lamps flared along the side of the mountain, whether lit by errant Orphelins or some clever contraption that functioned in their absence, he could not say. Eventually Verso stilled in his arms. But instead of the gentle embrace of sleep lending its softness and warmth to his soft body, he had become stiff and tense. Monoco shifted to sweep the white blaze from Verso’s forehead, and found his skin clammy and cold to the touch. His pale silver eyes gazed out into the darkness, unseeing.
“She’ll never come back. I’ll never see her again,” Verso whispered, his voice rough from crying.
“You don’t know that Vers…” The man snapped round to face him, eyes burning with cold flames.
“Yes. Yes, I do. What Mae… what that…Paintress did…” his upper lip curled as he spat the words out. “It can’t be undone Monoco, you know it as well as me.” Verso shifted awkwardly, stumbling to his feet. “She was always so careful.”
Monoco nodded and rose, his joints creaking. “She was, more careful than we two. How many?”
“How many lives? How many deaths?” Verso’s barked laugh was underlaid with some dark current, his eyes wild. “For you, it must be three or four. I lost count of mine long ago Monoco, so long.”
Close enough, thought Monoco. The River washed many things away, but never the memory of how it had ended. He remembered each time with limpid clarity, although the pain of how it happened was somehow subtracted from the visions. But Verso was cursed with the more literal, more visceral ressurection borne of a grown mind; rather than the gentle waves of the childlike one.
“For Alicia, there was only once. I carried her home to papa. We lay her in her bed, tended the wound from the blade until it shifted and started to heal itself. He was furious.” Verso’s eyes shone and his jaw was tight as he spoke through gritted teeth. “It was my fault, I should have protected her. I was her brother… And I went and did it again, didn’t I?” Monoco approached carefully, hand outstretched towards Verso’s shoulder.
“What do you mean Verso?” Verso’s throat bobbed and he blinked rapidly.
“I… I brought them here. I brought her here. I didn’t think…” His cheeks were wet once more. “Now I’ve lost them both. Soeurette, Papa…”
“It’s not your fault, Verso.” Monoco rumbled.
“It is, s’all my fault… This place… All of this.” He stepped away from Monoco, towards the dimly lit edge of the cliff. “It never ends, does it mon vieux?”
“Verso Dessendre,” Monoco boomed and the name echoed around the stoney heights. “Clear your mind. Come back to me Verso.” The man stopped and turned to face him. His shock of black and white hair was limmed by moonlight. It made Monoco think of the drawings of cherubs in little Verso’s art books, such a long time ago. A trickle of dust and pebbles rattled down the side of the chalky cliffs and onto the scaffolding below. Verso’s lip trembled. Monoco’s pith rose in his throat, the cold claws of dread tugging at his metal joints. He dropped his voice low, tried to force some comfort into it even as he felt the panic bubbling at the edges of his mind. “Verso, mon amour, please, let me hold you. We’ll go down to camp together. Maybe cut down a few Nevrons on the way, just like old times.”
Verso sighed and flashed a smile at Monoco, sickening in its contrast with the haggard lines of his face. With the harrowed look in his haunted eyes. Monoco’s stomach dropped and he lunged forward, his body reacting before his mind.
Verso stepped back.
Monoco threw himself to the floor, his heavy frame carrying him forwards over the edge as he scrabbled blindly with his big hands. He came to a stop half hanging over the edge, one hand jammed in a crack in the stone.
Verso looked up at him, past the vice like grip that Monoco held on his forearm. His pale grey eyes shone from under his furrowed brow. Monoco had seen that look on him before, confusion, betrayal. Petulence.
“Verso!” Monoco started to pull, the strain of the man’s weight and half of his pulling on his joints. The world had narrowed down to the smallest of canvases, inhabited only by the two of them. Everything else was black and silent. Below them spread out layers on layers of wood and metal scaffolds, ladders and struts and ropes snaking back and forth down into the mist. Sharp rocks jutted from the cliff face, snagging on the fabric of Verso’s trousers where he had slammed into the wall.
“M’noco…” Verso flexed his fingers, brushing the smooth wood of his forearm. “Please, let me go.”
“And why, exactly, would I do that?” His voice came out thicker than he expected, his breathing heavy. “I’ll just have to scrape you off the floor at the bottom.” Verso chuffed a laugh.
“I just want to forget.” Monoco’s joints screamed at him, as did a voice from deep in the back of his mind. The shape of Verso’s dying form crowded behind his mask, twisted faces screaming in pain. Monoco gasped, his breath hitching as he fought to hold on. His fingers shifted in the crack where he’d rammed them, and he tried to grip, to tent his knuckles into a wedge. I cannot fail, I cannot fall. I won’t have enough time to come back.
“You can forget with wine, sale idiot, we can both forget. All of it, Verso please! I can’t do this again.” Verso brought his other hand up to touch his, stroking the picto carved on the back of it.
“You can. No one is stronger than you mon vieux.”
“I’m not…not strong enough…to hold you together.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“You would have me watch you die, AGAIN?!” Monoco’s heart felt like it was splitting, a seam running through him, cracking his mask open until impossible tears fell onto Verso’s upturned face. The chroma mixed with Verso’s own sorrow, turning his face an ashen silver.
“I’m sorry, M’noco. But you need to let me go. I need you as you are for the battles to come, we can’t afford for you to take a trip to the River.” He fiddled with something on his sleeve as he spoke.
“So I can’t die, but you can. How unfairly you treat me Verso. Do you realise how cruel it is to see a piece of your heart whither and fade over and over and over again.” There was a sickening sound as the exposed metal of his knee joints scraped across the stone. He gripped tighter around Verso’s bracer, feeling the wooden plates splinter under the pressure. Verso yelped, his feet bumping against the cliff face as he swung. His eyes flitted to their arms, the last connection to survival, to Monoco. “Don’t do this to me, Verso please, mon coeur…” Too late, Monoco realised what Verso held in his fingers and snapped his gaze back to Verso’s face.
“Je t’aime, tu sais?”
Verso pulled the lace and his bracer split apart, so many pearls loosed from their string. Monoco’s hand closed around them as Verso’s arm slipped from his grip. Time seemed to stand still a moment, and he dared to wish that Alicia had come back to them just in the nick of time.
He could do nothing but watch as Verso slipped into the dark with a smile on his lips and love in his eyes. He could do nothing but wait and weep, chroma tears falling into the abyss. And when the sounds had quieted, what else could he do but drag himself back and begin his slow descent.
When he found him, Monoco sank to his knees and crawled. He didn’t mind the blood that soaked into his joints. Let it stain him, seep into his bark and oil his iron. He curled himself around Verso’s broken body, gathering him up even though his limbs didn’t move as they should. Monoco tried to curl the shattered fingers into his long grey mane, tangling them there in an illusion of life. He scraped at the ground, as though he could pull the lifeforce back into Verso’s mangled form; and shook at the sickening wetness of the back of his lover’s head, stroking the hair thick with congealed blood. He scrubbed at his mask, smearing it with Verso’s essence, his features disappearing in the streak of black-red. Monoco lay, crushing the fragile body in his long arms, feeling the un-natural scrape of bone against bone; his very soul laid open to stars and oil lamps.
“Je t’aime moi aussi…”
Written by a human in Ellipsus.