(no subject)
://075. Shade.
Dib liked the lazy heat of summer, and stayed up all night in it, getting soot-dark rings around his eyes, playing shadow games on his empty wall. In the peace of absolutely early mornings he'd let himself drop off stretched on top of the bed instead of under the sheets. That was too hot even for him. In the very heights of sleep deprivation he seemed to see things crawling in the shadows around his bed. Not threatening, but mysterious with faceted eyes (sometimes red) and feathery moth-antennae and velvet-grit skin. Halfway through the day again, when it was good and hot, he'd sink up from the boggy stupor of sleep and wander out to play with Zim. They both liked shadow games, crawling through Zim's base with darkness teeming and squealing around them, getting lost in the muggy darkness of eyes and distracting, discretely-living things. Dib never wondered again if he was just seeing things when he watched Zim pause, turn, look into the shadows, then shudder and turn quickly away.
"What are they, anyway?" Dib asked, when he came into his room to find Zim crouched in the window, staring big-eyed with antennae pricked into under-the-bed shadows.
Both of them, six months ago, had felt the world shift over, flip like a pancake, and be: again. Different. Dib ran his tongue over his lower lip. Tasted salt. Zim didn't believe in souls, or ghosts, but he believed in these things that made him nervous.
The world seemed different now. Flipped, twisted, inverse: filled with glimmering tiny things that fuzzed peripheral vision. Alive in a very obvious way. Sending out diplomats, dignitaries, to tap at the edges of two heads: Zim and Dib. Hello, hello. Hear us. Hear me. Sit up and listen. We are talking to you, dust's children...
"I don't know what you're talking about," Zim grated back. His hands alarming, twisting and working at the wood, pulling up splinters. Lying. "Crazy human, are you seeing things again?"
Dib took to chewing on his thumb and sitting up on round-the-clock sleepless marathons, waiting for the feather-whisper of their limbs.
://096. Writer‘s Choice: Promises
They promised each other things with their eyes and their hands. I'll chase you forever, I'll fight you forever, you're mine forever - my enemy. At eleven and three-hundred-twenty they sealed it with eye contact and words in torrents, searing from their mouths, shaking with adrenaline, near-feral with anticipation. Wherever you go, I'm following in your footsteps, I'm biting at your heels, I'm cutting at your back - don't let your guard down, don't turn your face from me, watch my eyes always, be careful or this ENDS. They kept it up through the teens, through twenties, Dib's sharpest finest years, eyes sunset-gold, mica-gold, snapping. Zim honed him with the care and expertise worthy of a master sculptor - worthy of Dib. He ran his hands over each fine curve of the human's mind and left fingerprints, Irken flags, and pride. At their best, at their shivering frothing violent best, it seemed like they could never touch each other: one would come across his doppelganger, bound with gravity, shame, all those binding things, and sneer and strike the bonds off and toss him up burning with star fever into space in an orgy of rage and excitment and the kind of crushing, immolating love a predator might have for prey.
But it couldn't last forever.
They turned their faces away from knowing - but it couldn't last forever.
Zim came to the funeral without anyone knowing how he found out about it - taller, thinner, boiled to toughness, rough and grinning with the bite of agony in his smile. Dib's children, grandchildren, looked at him and knew him and turned away quickly so that he could stand and run his hands over the large ebony coffin (open casket) and release his self-control in peace. He stood there for the longest time, with humans shifting and wafting around him easily, and when the family was going home and the funeral parlor manager was anxious and wanted him out Dib's oldest daughter brushed her still-inky hair behind her ears and talked the man into letting Zim stay. She'd known him her entire life, the snapping deadly uncle-creature who showed up unexpectedly and sometimes, gently, laid his hand across her throat and looked at her.
Zim stayed three hours, gazing down onto Dib - or not Dib, but what was left when Dib got tired of using his body. He didn't look like he was sleeping, Dib rolled around when he slept, laughed and muttered to himself. As he'd aged his face had lined, his eyes had gone watery and tired-colored, the sepia of old black-and-white-photos left long in the sun... Dib, declining. It was hard to let him go.
I'll chase you forever...
It was a promise they'd both known Dib couldn't keep.
Dib liked the lazy heat of summer, and stayed up all night in it, getting soot-dark rings around his eyes, playing shadow games on his empty wall. In the peace of absolutely early mornings he'd let himself drop off stretched on top of the bed instead of under the sheets. That was too hot even for him. In the very heights of sleep deprivation he seemed to see things crawling in the shadows around his bed. Not threatening, but mysterious with faceted eyes (sometimes red) and feathery moth-antennae and velvet-grit skin. Halfway through the day again, when it was good and hot, he'd sink up from the boggy stupor of sleep and wander out to play with Zim. They both liked shadow games, crawling through Zim's base with darkness teeming and squealing around them, getting lost in the muggy darkness of eyes and distracting, discretely-living things. Dib never wondered again if he was just seeing things when he watched Zim pause, turn, look into the shadows, then shudder and turn quickly away.
"What are they, anyway?" Dib asked, when he came into his room to find Zim crouched in the window, staring big-eyed with antennae pricked into under-the-bed shadows.
Both of them, six months ago, had felt the world shift over, flip like a pancake, and be: again. Different. Dib ran his tongue over his lower lip. Tasted salt. Zim didn't believe in souls, or ghosts, but he believed in these things that made him nervous.
The world seemed different now. Flipped, twisted, inverse: filled with glimmering tiny things that fuzzed peripheral vision. Alive in a very obvious way. Sending out diplomats, dignitaries, to tap at the edges of two heads: Zim and Dib. Hello, hello. Hear us. Hear me. Sit up and listen. We are talking to you, dust's children...
"I don't know what you're talking about," Zim grated back. His hands alarming, twisting and working at the wood, pulling up splinters. Lying. "Crazy human, are you seeing things again?"
Dib took to chewing on his thumb and sitting up on round-the-clock sleepless marathons, waiting for the feather-whisper of their limbs.
://096. Writer‘s Choice: Promises
They promised each other things with their eyes and their hands. I'll chase you forever, I'll fight you forever, you're mine forever - my enemy. At eleven and three-hundred-twenty they sealed it with eye contact and words in torrents, searing from their mouths, shaking with adrenaline, near-feral with anticipation. Wherever you go, I'm following in your footsteps, I'm biting at your heels, I'm cutting at your back - don't let your guard down, don't turn your face from me, watch my eyes always, be careful or this ENDS. They kept it up through the teens, through twenties, Dib's sharpest finest years, eyes sunset-gold, mica-gold, snapping. Zim honed him with the care and expertise worthy of a master sculptor - worthy of Dib. He ran his hands over each fine curve of the human's mind and left fingerprints, Irken flags, and pride. At their best, at their shivering frothing violent best, it seemed like they could never touch each other: one would come across his doppelganger, bound with gravity, shame, all those binding things, and sneer and strike the bonds off and toss him up burning with star fever into space in an orgy of rage and excitment and the kind of crushing, immolating love a predator might have for prey.
But it couldn't last forever.
They turned their faces away from knowing - but it couldn't last forever.
Zim came to the funeral without anyone knowing how he found out about it - taller, thinner, boiled to toughness, rough and grinning with the bite of agony in his smile. Dib's children, grandchildren, looked at him and knew him and turned away quickly so that he could stand and run his hands over the large ebony coffin (open casket) and release his self-control in peace. He stood there for the longest time, with humans shifting and wafting around him easily, and when the family was going home and the funeral parlor manager was anxious and wanted him out Dib's oldest daughter brushed her still-inky hair behind her ears and talked the man into letting Zim stay. She'd known him her entire life, the snapping deadly uncle-creature who showed up unexpectedly and sometimes, gently, laid his hand across her throat and looked at her.
Zim stayed three hours, gazing down onto Dib - or not Dib, but what was left when Dib got tired of using his body. He didn't look like he was sleeping, Dib rolled around when he slept, laughed and muttered to himself. As he'd aged his face had lined, his eyes had gone watery and tired-colored, the sepia of old black-and-white-photos left long in the sun... Dib, declining. It was hard to let him go.
I'll chase you forever...
It was a promise they'd both known Dib couldn't keep.