Akashic Gospels
excerpt two...
Birds and Bees...
I can think of better things to be doing than sitting in the garden alone. Seems like a terrible waste of a quiet afternoon. Of course, it's not afternoon--or it might be. I don't know. It feels like it, or maybe just something that evokes the feeling of it.
Siesta. That's the word I'm looking for. The Oasis feels sleepy. All the people who were working in the garden when I came in have gone for the usual equivalent-to-midday break, and it's very quiet.
It's too quiet. Moments like this trick my mind into thinking I'm in a dead shift, so, like always, I wind up reaching out to the minds around me, wrapping the noise of them around me like a blanket. A security blanket. I wonder if I had one, when I was a child. A stuffed animal, maybe? I wish I could remember. Sad, when there's so little normality in the world around you that you need to go looking for it in your memories.
Normality. The best indication that the garden isn't normal is the bees. They're about the right size, perform the same function, but they're mauve. Mauve-striped bees, that are perfectly happy to be here in our garden, but still think we're rather strange.
Did I forget to mention they were super-intelligent? Super-intelligent, well-organized, and very protective of their 'family'. Woe to the person who swats a bee around here. Patrick did once, completely by accident, and Franklin had to explain very carefully that it had been an accident, offer reparations, that sort of thing, before they went all African-killer-bee on Patrick's ass.
Bees have a very elaborate sense of justice.
I'm strangely fond of the bees, mostly because of my involvement in bringing them here, I suppose. Their hive constitutes a separate, sovereign nation, living here at the Oasis under our protection. We didn't technically sign a treaty with them, but the only thing that was missing was the paperwork.
There are other nations here, too. The clan that seems to be descended from Mystique, the half-dozen Aztecs - yes, real live Aztecs - that wandered in the other week. Others, too. They keep themselves aloof, except for the communal work. No integration. I don't like that trend.
A community of islands is too vulnerable for me.
***
Letters from the Doghouse...
I am, as the saying goes, sleeping on the couch. Except it's not the couch, it's the floor in the hallway outside our bedroom. There is a couch downstairs, in our makeshift living room, but if I went down there I couldn't sulk quite as loudly. Besides, it's probably occupied already. Sleeping space is at a premium around here.
Who the fuck am I kidding... I'm out here because I want to knock on the door, confess that I'm a total fucking idiot and grovel until she lets me come back to bed. But I won't. I've got my pride, after all. Sometimes I think that's the only thing I do have left...
..and that sounded so utterly maudlin I think I'm going to be sick.
I'm out here because I'm stubborn. That's all. Dom doesn't really care that I tried to break a chair over Bishop's head in the bar tonight. She's not all that fond of him herself, really. The only reason she's annoyed is that I wouldn't kiss and make up.
Bright Lady, what an image.
Dom's got some odd ideas when it comes to the Twelve. According to her, I'm allowed to think whatever I want about the others we've got here, but I'm not allowed to say any of it to their faces. I'm not allowed to growl at Mikhail, I'm not allowed to shake Lorna to within an inch of her life, and I'm not allowed to fight with Bishop. She keeps pointing out that we're all going to have to work together in the end - if we ever get a full Twelve and some idea of what the hell to do with it - so "wouldn't it be better, Nate, if no one was holding any grudges?"
I really don't mind Mikhail all that much. He's just a kid, after all, although if he doesn't stop leaving his toy cars all over the house I'm going to throw them all into the recycling.
Lorna, quite frankly, can kiss my ass. We've all had to deal with alternates of people we don't like. A Creed was through here a few months ago, and while I sure as hell didn't have a drink with the man, I didn't try to rip his throat out, or run and hide. Or sit there and cringe, like she does.
But Bishop... I've never liked Bishop. Any Bishop. That doesn't mean I've ever really hated him, because I haven't. Not even this Bishop, who seems to spend the bulk of the time that we're in the same vicinity doing his best to get on my nerves.
I don't hate him. I'm frugal with my hate, these days. My feelings towards him run to a sort of mild contempt, and a whole shitload of irritation. There's just too much about him that rubs me the wrong way. I'd be the biggest hypocrite in what's left of the world if I complained about someone else being obsessed by 'duty' and 'obligation', but Bishop just--goes about it the wrong way.
It's a job, to him. Responsibility is its own reward. A continuum, not a goal. He's not climbing a mountain, he's trudging determinedly along the straight and narrow, glaring at anyone who strays from the appointed path.
That's what bothers me the most. The--confidence. He still sees himself as the long arm of the law, so to speak. He watches everything, and everyone, and scowls fearsomely when he thinks he sees a trangression against his idea of How Things Should Be.
Dom told me that I once called him a 'lord of order' when I was drunk. That stuck in my head, because it's true. He loves order. Yearns for it, in a world where it's a rare commodity.
He is order, in a way.
And I'm... not.
I'm... my brother's brother.
***
Franklin's coming, I can sense him. I don't have a lot of time. He'll come and reach into my mind and take it all away. He thinks he's taking away the madness, but madness and knowledge are the same thing, why can't he see that?
It was a museum. It had no ceilings and the walls were falling down, but the gods were still there. I remember Dom shouting at me and trying to drag me out, screaming at me that the floor wasn't stable. She didn't understand, either. They were talking to me, telling me things, and if I'd turned away I never would have known.
They told me I was right, that I've always been right about what's driving this. It's him, and it's us, and it's love and anger... that's how it's all going to end, if we can get there at the right time with all the pieces on the chessboard.
They kept whispering and whispering to me, because they were dying, just shadows, and they had to tell me what they knew before the earth swallowed them up. I didn't understand at first, but now I do.
We're them, now, we're our own gods, we shape things.
In one of the cases, the glass had broken and fallen into a million pieces on the floor and there wasn't anything separating us from them. The names were different, but it was us. Dom was there with her sword, except I think it was my sword, and she was hiding beneath Kali's skin, beautiful beneath the terrifying face. Kitty and Lorna were there too, different aspects of the same goddess, wrathful and gentle--separate, but not really.
And Vishnu had Franklin's face, and everything around him was blue and calm like the eye of the storm. He was the preserver, that's what the little card said, but I knew that without reading it. He's Franklin. Some truths don't need to be explained.
But I was Shiva, Shiva had my face, and that's what made me stop fighting Dom and run out of the museum before the floor caved in. Because I was Shiva, and I don't remember, but I think I start where Franklin stops, and that scares me. I think that means I'm going to do something, something horrible, unless I can find out a way to stop being what I am--
He's here.
***
One Of Those Nights...
So... last night Dom and I made up.
With a little help.
I don't know if I should be writing about this. It's not as if it's particularly important in a historical sense, but--it was. Memorable. Something like that.
This is just too embarassing. Dom's going to find this later and laugh her pretty little ass off, I just know it. But I suppose I really should say something about it. This is a record of my life, not just the history of the Oasis.
So. The 'incident'.
It was actually a first for me. Well... not quite. There was that time with Tetherblood and Aliya, but we were very drunk, and very young.
Dom and Patrick and I were just very drunk, last night...
Anyhow. It started in the bar, just like everything else around here. I swear if the small-a apocalypse arrived, it would start in the bar.
And I'm getting off-track. I wasn't quite with it, last night. A little spacey, a little--uninhibited. Franklin had missed some shift residue, I think.
Dom was still giving me the cold shoulder, more or less. She was pissy, I was irked, and Patrick was just hammered enough to think that we were being cute. Or something like that.
I like Patrick. But he's a shit-disturbing son of a bitch sometimes.
So he started to flirt with Dom. And Dom, who's always been really fond of Patrick, started flirting back. Gleefully. Throwing everything she had into it, as if she were a born flirter who'd been flirt-deprived for so many years that she felt like she had to make up for lost time.
Everyone was watching me, expecting to--I don't know, blow my top and break Pat's jaw or something. Frankly, I considered it. Not because Dom was sitting on his lap and purring, but because I owed him a punch in the jaw for the last time we were out hunting. I'd beaten one too many shifts off us, so I'd gotten a little loopy, and he had to sneak up behind me with a tree branch and knock me out, so that he could drag me back to the Oasis. Perfectly justifiable, but I really didn't appreciate the concussion.
The fact that he had his hands all over my girlfriend would have been the perfect excuse. But I restrained myself. I sat there drinking my quasi-Scotch and practicing my best martyred look.
Then the conversation went kind of like this (and I do remember it, it and everything else from last night)...
Dom: "Stop making faces at me, lout."
Me: "I'll make faces if I want."
Pat: "You two still hissing and spitting at each other?"
Dom: "Well, I'm sitting on your lap, Pat. What do you think?"
Pat: "I think you two should kiss and make up."
Me: "I'd rather burn in hell." (Okay, so I got a little melodramatic.)
Dom: "Fine."
Me: "Fine."
At that point, Pat, who was laughing hysterically, told me that I was being stupid, and that if I didn't appreciate Dom, there were plenty of people standing in line who would.
Me: "Fuck off."
Pat: "Okay, Nate, don't say I didn't warn you."
Then he picked her up and walked out of the bar. Dom was giggling, Pat was grinning, and I was sputtering, trying to think of something slightly more intelligent to say than "My Dom! Give her back!" as I trailed along behind them.
I'm not entirely sure how we wound up in the garden. Mutual consent, I suppose. We eventually got tired of walking in circles around the inside of the perimeter, and decided to find someplace to sit down and continue our witty banter.
I wish I could say that it got a little hazy at that point, but I'd be lying through my teeth. I remember all of it, and the fact that it's a bit embarassing to write about it doesn't change the fact that it was frighteningly enjoyable at the time.
So. Things got weird, if fun. Pat told Dom very earnestly she was one hell of a woman, and then informed me that I was a selfish bastard for keeping her all to myself.
Dom laughed like a madwoman, smacked him across the back of the head and told him she was the one doing the keeping, because I needed a keeper.
I growled and told them I hated them both.
Dom kissed me.
Then Dom kissed Patrick.
Then I--
I think I'll leave it there. Dom's lying on the bed wearing a come-hither look and nothing else.
More later.
***
Me and My Subconscious...
I've decided to use my journal to record dreams, too. I figured it was a good idea. The dreams mean something, everyone and their uncle knows that. If I could see a pattern, maybe I could understand--more. About everything.
Pattern recognition. Here we go.
Last night I was dreaming about a garden. Not ours, I don't think--although I'm not sure. It was dead and withered, as if winter had come early and killed everything as it bloomed, then gone again, leaving mud and wreckage in its wake. There was a strange smell lingering in the air.
Salt, I think. But it didn't fit. It was as if the smell was laid over the image, a mismatched layer. A symbol clashing with reality. Something like that.
I walked through the garden, searching to see if anything was still alive. I could hear children crying in the distance. I felt--afraid, desperate to find--something. Food? I'm not sure it was that simple.
I wasn't watching where I was walking, and I stepped right onto a chessboard, set there on the ground. It broke, and the pieces scattered everywhere. The white king fell into a puddle, and I reached out to save him before he drowned, but I couldn't find him. The water was too deep.
I woke up crying.
I suppose I should be used to that.