[ with weyland in nyc ]

[tragic_mask]

They step through the door, and find themselves on the cracked sidewalk outside of a lively bar. A sign glows: "Blue Owl."

It's nighttime, but the city still glows with all kinds of light, and shakes with the noise of honking, shouting, music, the clinking of glasses, all blending together into the cacophony and symphony of the city.

Melpomene looks around. "Well, we're back... Right where I started."

Comments

[mechanicalswans]

"No," he says contemplatively. "No, I think I have the icicles covered, and you don't taste of winter, but of change. It may be winter later, but for now... transition and mystery."

[tragic_mask]

"You sound like a newspaper horoscope." She laughs. "Ever thought of making money that way? I hear it's a very lucrative business."

[mechanicalswans]

"I prefer to make my predictions more... individualized," he says with a chuckle, giving her an intent look.

"For instance, I can tell you that this week, for you--the beginning of the week, there is a great deal of potential for excitement, but you must avoid women carrying birdcages. If you do encounter one, you will be tired for the rest of the week. On Thursday, I see an unexpected journey, and for the weekend there is a chance for an argument, but if you follow your heart it will all turn out right."

He can make up horoscopes with the best of them.

[tragic_mask]

"Well, clearly I'm going to have to look for women carrying birdcages just so I can make sure to avoid them..."

[mechanicalswans]

"If they see you, it is too late," he says solemnly, before leaning in to nibble at her neck. "I would stay away from pet stores, and from the ballet, just to be safe."

[tragic_mask]

"Well, thank you for the warning," she says.

[mechanicalswans]

"I would hate to see you get hurt," he says. "Especially when it would be something so easily preventable. Next week, though, the birdcages will be fine again."

[tragic_mask]

"Oh, all right.

"Well, I'm glad. I was planning on visiting the pet store."

[mechanicalswans]

"Planning to get a pet?" he asks, idly toying with her hair. "I could see you having a snake, mysterious and oracular and all. Or possibly a dog, but not one of those that women carry in their purses. Hunting or herding dogs."

[tragic_mask]

"Well, I used to have a dog. A great big bear of a dog. But no. Now I just go to look at the birds in their cages. It's very metaphorical, you know."

[mechanicalswans]

"I used to have hunting dogs," he says. "I suppose technically I still do, or rather the court does, but I wouldn't keep them in an apartment; so I have mechanical pets instead. Do you like birds?"

[tragic_mask]

"They're pretty, if useless. A beautiful part of nature."

[mechanicalswans]

"I'm quite fond of them."

He rests his head on her shoulder again. "I used to be able to turn into one. I can't, anymore."

[tragic_mask]

"Really? What changed?"

She imagines being able to fly, and losing that power. It's crushing.

[mechanicalswans]

"I was crippled," he says softly. "And the prosthetics I made to make up for it, they make me much too heavy as a bird. I would need to make something else, to compensate for that, and there is the trouble with being a metalworker. Anything else I could make, would make me even heavier and less able to fly."

[tragic_mask]

Oh, yes. She remembers now. "I'm sorry. I have never flown. Sometimes I wish I had wings, because I could see things from up high, from far away."

[mechanicalswans]

"It's wonderful up there," he whispers. "When the weather is nice, you can see very far--at home it was even more wonderful, the view over the mountains and the sea. And there's a certain excitement to being tossed by a storm, powerless but struggling."

[tragic_mask]

She closes her eyes again, imagining. "There is something romantic in the fight, I'm sure."

[mechanicalswans]

"There's something romantic, I find, in being powerless, but only if it's voluntary. I suppose it's the only sort of rebellion of that kind allowed to us--to me, anyway."

[tragic_mask]

"Seems a bit ironic." Melpomene's always one to pull out a literary term at an unexpected time.

[mechanicalswans]

"Irony," he says softly, eyes closed, voice devoid of emotion. "There is nothing I want more than to have an ordinary job, ordinary house, ordinary wife, ordinary life--and at the end of it, to die. And these things, I can never have. There is your irony."

[tragic_mask]

It's terrifying, the sudden drop. As she regains her voice, she runs a hand gently through his hair, brow knit.

"I know that one well enough."

[mechanicalswans]

"We should find a place somewhere," he whispers, as though afraid to say it properly aloud. "Someone else's world where neither of us is a god, and just... be ordinary, for a while. Take a weekend off, let a semblance of ordinary life take the place of longing, even if it isn't real."

[tragic_mask]

There's a silence. Then: "Where would we go?"

[mechanicalswans]

"Anywhere," he says. "The past, the future, any part of the world, any part of some other planet. Wherever people go, wherever no people go."