07-19-2018, 10:16 AM
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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.
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
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