Three of twenty-four hours of the day, Rialto was splayed out in his carriage, eyes closed, totally unmoving. Twelve hours right until dusk was his light sleep period, eyes still closed but this time noise filtered into his ears, the light outside stung his eyelids, the cool metal of the carriage heating steadily not under his touch but due to the sunlight pouring over his head, through the window, conscious enough to grab a fly about to land on his face mid-flight. That wasn’t being asleep. That was called playing to the funny reality of immortality, which meant an endless stretch of halved days, utterly powerless to the other half unfurling over the world as far as the horizon, blazing beautiful sun that would one day raze him down to the bone.

Maybe the problem could be solved if he found himself an actual sanctuary that didn’t flood with sunlight, somewhere with curtains and enough room to lie down flat. Why he wouldn’t move, why he insisted on caging himself in this metal prison - this, he would say, was all because some of his materials were sensitive. It was too late to relocate since he’d already settled down, you see.

Sometime after dusk, Rialto finally raised himself above window-level as the sun receded. He was going through the rest of his daily routine, sifting snips of silk and beads into colour-coded categories that would inevitably merge with how little space there was in the carriage allowing anything to be kept separate, when there was a joint rattle through the top connector of the ferris wheel as something connected heavily with the inside of another carriage. On a normal day, Rialto wouldn’t spare it much thought; maybe he’d hurl a crass statement their way, or answer in kind with a solid bang after kicking the opposite end of his carriage, but blood filled his nose. The smell of it, unfamiliar - on someone that was familiar.

He swung himself upwards to his feet, toeing himself a path through the cluster of tiny bottles of glitter and equally small brushes obstructing the door, and out of his makeshift home, before Rialto promptly dropped in front of the other carriage in question.

His eyes dilated at the small figure torn up six ways from Sunday (or Marko’s clothes were, at least), limbs askew and heavy with evident exhaustion. The stench of blood wasn’t his own, but the battery was. Without a word, in the next second Rialto was crouching and leaning forward to look Marko right in the eye, and saying, “Give me a name. A face.” He licked his teeth, widened eyes starting to fill with cold hunger. “Don’t hide anything. I’ll make ’em wish they hadn’t opened their eyes today. And yesterday.”

This was before registering that Marko copped, in actuality, few external injuries at all, but the green, mean monster inside of him already reared its little head and sniffed the air.

© MADI

The Cool Kids for the better part of at least a decade were no one less than the vicious tag team that toted umbrellas and cackled at the people they scored dates with via Cat's Tinder - burning, streaking a mile ahead of their more sedate counterpart (or Rialto's, going by face). Grins like a solid uppercut, like a bomb. Annoying, ear-ringing, blinding, positively painful. Radiant, you could've called them. A pair of fools that dipped out of their detached immortal stupor on weekends, looking for something modernly made, something interesting. Twenty years back, following what the other human and slightly less cool kids did, Alex had tried a mullet, and had woken up later with one of Rialto's knives held quite seriously to their neck. The back, of course. At the mullet.

Or the fun ones, you could've also called them. Not reckless in the same way - twin terrors only by the similar degree of discord they wreaked, but usually when they hit the town they split, paths perpendicular. Rialto himself wasn't a partier. Drinking and pretending it had an influence on him just so he could shout at people, very innocently rude, was fun maybe, but the risk wasn't, undead and surprisingly resilient to being stabbed he might be. He's an artist. Jots notes on the new customs, the fads, the colour he sees on the streets. It's always interesting to him how people are sometimes so alive (less literally), and the raggedy youth with a mistake for a haircut - then alive, yes literally - and a patched jacket caught his eye like movement before a big cat.

Nasty but sincere. A lost boy with too much of a swagger, steps large with the air that he could cross the whole world just by walking.

At the answer, Rialto stilled, then leaned in from Alex's side to sniff at Marko's head. The cuts were slow to bleed, but deep and those were indeed little chunks of gravel embedded in them. Further still the blood caking his collar was more assuredly not from someone they knew, including Marko himself. Huh. Never mind. If Marko wasn't, at present, a little too weak to live through the heart attacks Rialto regularly dealt without pause, Rialto would say something nasty like, you mind if I help myself to that blood, but Marko looked pitiful enough Rialto only gave a bit of his hair a light sympathetic tug.

The limp, warmly unfurling relief following their revelation that Marko, while knocked around, wasn't in a truly life-threatening situation, couldn't possibly show itself in any other way.

"Wrapping him up like a mummy will do the trick," he suggested. Benevolently. And now, appropriately more melodramatically, "Kid. You dummy. I know the Rock is swimming in muscle, and you kind of don't even want to fight back when he comes at you because he's such a good, buff guy, but still. How could you let him clothesline you so hard?" That was also him being nice. Pretending Marko had gone out in some way more valiant than off a cliff, even though if he'd actually been in a tussle there would be more blunt force trauma and less cuts unless the opponent was him and had thirty-six little knives. He could, alternatively, offer to beat up the actual rock - and he'll probably go look for it later to give it a few kicks - but in the meantime, he let Ezra slide in front of him.

Not to be left out, Rialto beckoned to Alex to join him, and pointed at Marko's shoes. Someone should get those off. There was some blood on them too, but Rialto wasn't low enough to want to lick those.

© MADI