(Untitled)

[picksthelosers]

Her dress is torn. To be frank, tattered would be a better word for it.

She doesn’t really care. Dresses are just bits cloth, no matter how they’re fashioned1. There’s a cigarette in her left hand and she sitting just a few feet from what she had, a few minutes earlier, stubbed her toe on in the sand

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[apocralyptic]

Coin had never in his life understood what he was, and he wasn't starting now, but he was walking the beach for about the third time that day because the sea's voice was loud enough to drown out another voice's silence and there had been more glass today, too, though he was pretty sure he'd got all of it by now.

Still, he hadn't seen her for a while, and new things had happened and people who were people liked to tell gods things, didn't they? But as he approached he realized she was already talking, so he supposed there was something she would rather talk about, and that was all right.

"What means that?" he wondered. She could be as hard to understand as he was, sometimes.

[picksthelosers]

She turns her head towards Coin, half turning the crown to face him, a smile on her face.

She smiles too easily. Always has, probably always will. "It means something that doesn't mean much of anything these days. Well, it means a bit of something today, but not much."

Things change, a bit like people do.

[apocralyptic]

Coin regarded the crown a bit warily. It wasn't as if he'd really seen many crumbled walls; they'd tended to stay intact or be blown completely away in an instant, one or the other, but there was reality and then there was symbology and it was an edgy thing. She could be wonderful, but he remembered now why she could never be comforting.

Veils, though, veils were a new thing, and he still didn't see what she'd meant. "Is it especially bright today?" he hazarded. "I hadn't noticed."

[picksthelosers]

A slight shake of the head, but the smile stays in place.

"No, not that. Though you're right about brightness." Overly sunny days never did suit. "I'm going to you a story Coin, would you like that?"

[apocralyptic]

Coin smiled then. Stories were what had happened- or hadn't, more often- and not what you were supposed to do about it. They were little pieces of life without those nasty consequences that would come with living them.

They were wonderful things, in other words. "Of course."

[picksthelosers]

"Once upon a time."

She feels obligated to start like that, most stories ought to begin like that. It's the retrospective that makes them better.

"There was a lady who had a city built upon a name, and all the people said it, and prayed it and loved her for it. There was a catch though, she could never see it, never see them."

[apocralyptic]

There were questions already, and you didn't talk when people were talking but rules were always less binding around her. "Why not?" he asked. "If it was hers?"

[picksthelosers]

She had been waiting for questions. She's always been a bit fond of answering them.

Most of the time.

"They felt that if she saw them, if they saw her eyes, then she would pick someone else to favour and a loss of her favour was something they couldn't bear to think of."

[apocralyptic]

Coin understood then, and nodded sagely. That would be something to fear. "Did it ever happen?" he wondered.

[picksthelosers]

"In the end, they just became a story."

Their leaders went mad, stretched themselves too thin, did deeds unspeakable.

"You can't save the unredeemable. It is better to walk away."