A Cosmic Overture Drenched in Eastern Opium

A false start to Will of an Architect

Will of an Architect is the first novel within Cosmopolita. It is separated into six books spanning the course of a year. I work tirelessly on it, every single day. It’s rumored that Tolstoy started “Anna Karenina” (the greatest novel ever written) over 35 times until he read a short story by Pushkin that opened with the line “The guests arrived at the dacha.”

Needless to say, I am not Tolstoy, nor will I ever be. And despite the numerous amount of attempts to start Will of an Architect’s first book, Her Comforting Light, I found this particular instance to be among my favorite of these false starts. It’s messy. It’s indulgent. It goes nowhere. But there’s an underlying element of psychedelic realism that is very present here. One of these days, I’ll write a post detailing my theories on that.

So this is essentially the original first 2 or 3 chapters of that original WIP.

In a small townhouse built in the shade of a megatower, during a stage of relapse - violent as they all were, cold and lonesome, the mercenary-poet swallowed opium lit by the fires of the orient. Kai Miranda Ryuko lounged atop her bedspread, frameless. She was surrounded by a sea of comfort dolls and plushies of animals faded and stained with blood and tears. She hadn’t showered in a few days, rather, she bathed herself in perfume and her half-naked body was strewn about the sheets like a fetid pool. Her comforter was wrapped between her legs and she clung onto it as if it too was another thing that would leave her. She lit the jade pipe, eyes fell like slow leaves, thighs tightened and collapsed as a wash pooled up in her chest before falling. And the smoke fell out of her open window where the neon oozed in. 

She was not seeing Mikaela Svarkovkylin anymore. And though their breakup had been amicable, at least in part, Kai Miranda’s own sense of being knew no greater pain. She couldn’t complain. Mikaela told her she’d let her sleep in their studio for a few nights until she found a place. If Kai’d taken her up on the offer; if she found that they really had broken up, then it wouldn’t amount to anything substantial had she stayed, slept on the pile of dirty clothes spread about the apartment, using either her own blouse as a blanket or, if she was feeling brave, Mikaela’s pressed up against her cheek or wet in her mouth, like a newborn pacifier, woken in the dead of night as a matter of withdrawal and seen Mikaela sitting on her leather recliner, nude and cross-legged, watching her from a distance, beckoning her forward with the promise of deep sleep in one hand - a needle, an old twisted spoon and lighter, and the method to ensure she stay submissive to her etiolated flesh, the gift of her cosmic liquor by means of an especially massaged breast. Had Kai stayed, she would have found peace in the denigration of her soul in the company of an illusionary master, who ignored her and made her feel as if she could only ever orgasm for her, akin to some divine celestial rite. Mikaela’s charity, thought Kai, was a way to hold back the softness of her heart. Rather, she let her stay as to say “look how generous I am! Now beg for my forgiveness.”  

But there was no forgiveness to be had. That is to say that they both went about the separation formal like a board meeting, dressed all the same. Mikaela and her formalities! Absurd to think that she’d dress this proper to go out and spend an afternoon in the company of wealthy dreamtech exec’s in search of talented neurosurgeons like her. Her stockings were torn in the spots where the length of her skirt could just barely cover it, but her tattoos on her thigh did the part of attracting the gaze in that general direction anyways. What of her hair? She’s the sort to think it trendy to appear like a messy bedspread. Plausible deniability! Whoever it was she was meeting, thought Kai, had a thing for office girls. 

This is to say that her moving out and into Mikaela’s sister’s place was met with quiet acceptance, save for the occasional night terrors that the roommate had to hear. Kai Miranda was addicted to the being that lived within the enclave - a virtual room Mikaela watched over for her, the soul-clone temple of the white-haired dopedrinker. She could never forgive her. It was therapy! A healing process she convinced her to do. Why would she take her clone away from her? There, in those white rooms, the figure of another, in her image, sat before her, removed of her scars and markings of insomnia and regret. How was she to know that her problems lay solely in the flesh? Resolution is not without its tribulations, to this Kai’d raise a glass of amber. And if she was to find that speaking to her clone was the proper way to heal, then why should the other object to Kai fucking her in such a private place?

Their arrangement was simple enough. So simple, in fact, that Kai Miranda’s unconscious night terrors had no memory of the small girlish figure of her has-been harlot. Something or other about the law of their living situation being void of anything but the intimacy of their woven flesh, the rules they agreed upon, the decree of their desires, was the supremacy of meaningless sex, rather, finding meaning in their worship of the void; they were the cultists of nothing. And in that nothing, the abyss that they both shared deep within them, a collective pool of black tar and empty promises, became an aphrodisiac of the senses like an incense burned with the scent of their sweat. It was only a week, but to Kai, it felt like it’d been a year since they last shared beds. If Kai’d spoken of anything regarding love or feelings - say, it was a dreary November afternoon, the kind where it rained for hours and hours with no sign of stopping, big gobs of water stinging the eyes as it hurled down from heaven onto her, and imagine then if Kai’d spend her days at work (she, at this time, worked at a bakery), hearing the ill-woes of her clientele, that the cake she spent three days preparing was suddenly canceled on account of the mother not liking the meringue that Kai had carefully made, and then, on her way home, missing the inner-city monorail, her skirt getting mud along it, her socks drenched from the puddles that formed in low-lying areas, only to go home, shivering, feel no greater call than to strip herself of her damp clothes, feel the heat of the radiator enclose her, walk about the safety of her secluded, but small, studio apartment nude, feeling the comforts of her partner’s gaze be both an erotic call to arms and a camaraderie that formed out of pure, mutual affection, then Kai would have her cheeks squeezed, her flesh made red by Mikaela’s hands, which would lunge out whenever she walked by her as to both shut her yapping about wanting to spend the day cuddling in each other’s company, eating from ice-cream cartons, maybe smoking a few joints and ordering a large pizza, extra cheese, and to have Kai associate that feeling they both wanted, which was to climax repeatedly for the entirety of the evening, so she’d associate that feeling of satisfaction only with Mikaela’s will, as if she held the key to Kai Miranda’s nerve-endings. 

Mikaela heard enough of love to serve three lifetimes from every one of her patients, to which she felt obliged to listen in on. And though her work kept her busy, talk amongst her patients became noticeably different. Their conversations were platonic, regarding the weather or extramarital affairs, and often evolved into comments on Kai’s absence to such an extent that it made Mikaela question how it all went down. If her eye twitched, or if they resembled some stagnant pool or flowing stream, then perhaps Mikaela would remember her failure towards upholding that single promise. One girl had asked if Kai was on holiday, remembering that she often spoke fondly of the Redleaven capital. “Oh, she used to go on about the culture there! She never struck me as a wine-drinker, believe me - I know a thing or two about wealth!” Another commented on the sudden quietness of the apartment-clinic after having noticed the absence of muffled reggaeton oozing out of the bathroom. “I hate to bother you, but I feel much better with music. Could you turn on the radio?” Another, notorious for her stutter after having her face broken apart by the boot of some rival gangleader with chrome in place of a soul, a particular irony on her part having once made thousands a night for doing the same thing to other, albeit, more consenting clientele, had asked if it were possible to see her for one last time, to return a pink stuffed bear as a reward for being well-behaved during her operation. 

“She’s a booker at Fortuna Electric now - don’t bother.” 

So Kai had been in her attic room for a week and disregarded all others in exchange for her own maudlin solitude. Every day had become a blur and every moment that passed only passed when she remembered to breathe - as if the clock on the wall had stopped its eternal motion lest she exhale. Then the sun would fade. And the white-haired insomniac with her inch-long fetish marks about her thigh would curse its departure. Footsteps pounded late in the evening as they climbed up the stairwell, then lightened as they made their way past her wooden door. Pause. No movement. For the slightest rustle of her bedspread could signal to her roommate that she was not asleep and subsequently available for gentle conversation. Returns to the bedroom before her door creaks close- but only ajar for the sound of breathing was like her own little noise box. 

Poetry of the 

Divine immortal women

That rule that girl’s heart

The last time that Kai heard the Empress’s voice was on the 9th of April 3009, in the shade of the Perfumed Cathedral. She was nineteen then - penniless and yearning for meaning - though in that state of familiar hopefulness that even the most despondent of voices sounded sweeter than any summer songbird. The Empress was orating her own work, the holy book of Her Maternal Faith, though not with her own voice in the true sense of the word, nor like timbers of the flesh or the vibrations of one’s own throat, but like an om that resonated all across the consciousness of the many who worshiped her down below with hands stretched out towards the sky, tearful and unyielding. They wished to grab it, hold it close and covet it as if the sound which echoed like a war drum in all of their hearts had not been a telepathic medium. For the om had been the closest thing to any physical material divine presence that they would ever encounter. The wind blew it into each living soul, an echo of that unknown ideal. 

And as the angels dwell in the sky above, untouched by the corrupting human finger, so too did the Empress sleep in the subconscious of the many, where any proof of her true presence erupted forth a frenzy - frantic and undivided. And though Kai had heard the om of the great mother that afternoon, she, for the longest time, did not believe it was the Empress who spoke to her, but rather an unknowable essence. So on this evening as she lay on the bedspread, woeful at her own conscious for not giving her the strength to surpass the need to be, as in to monitor the wellbeing of her beloved roommate or her own needs, she recollected the memory as if it had an intrinsic power to hold her deep and allow her soul to travel towards that lantern of unending comfort like a moth does as if the feebleness of its own consciousness was an ember from a much larger and unknowable flame. She’d hoard herself away on long binges, hold her pillow between her legs and fall into the delight of the poppy’s prophecy, believing everything she saw under its influence was akin to a sign from the Empress herself. 

The Empress had been giving a sermon, her first and only public appearance for the year, to the many drunks, whores, priests, pilgrims, scholars, merchants, brewers, pirates, vagrants, mongrels, students, soldiers, liberals, fanatics, acidheads, simpletons, anarchists, artisans, baristas, engineers, criminals, theocrats, humanists, socialists, conservatives, capitalists, philosophers and anybody else who wished to hear her. Not so much wished, but felt compelled by that eternal om that breathed from the Perfumed Cathedral - like a ghost howling in the dusken twilight. And like a ghost, the Empress would have resembled one - for they could not see her. This led many to believe that the voice they heard was indeed from beyond rather than from the confines of the great Perfumed Cathedral. And the Cathedral was so vast that even if there was a pulpit for her to stand on, they would not be able to even witness her in her white. Furthermore, they knew that they could not see her, for there exists no greater sin than to lay eyes on such divine creations. And they would rather whip themselves in the open markets or profess themselves to dark shadows at the end of the earth, in quiet solitude and gentle reflection, before cursing the great mother-goddess with their own wicked eyes. And, this is what they truly believed, that such a monument could only exist to that which is impossible to physically see - even if they were to spend the late hours of the night alchemizing some elixir to witness the form of the archangels - they could not even comprehend such a thing as the Empress they so loved in a form known to them. So they could not sin. And this charity, which scholars declared in fiery debates in hidden temples to the Maternal Faith, was that if such a power were to exist, then surely she could present herself in a way that the flesh could witness her? If she could not, then surely she is not all-powerful - yet they concluded that she had the ability to present herself to each and every person, but she chose not, to save humanity from the sin of looking. And this is what gave them all the inherent purpose to submit to her transcendence - for such charity means they ought not to take God for granted. From that day on, the Empress had become her raison d’etre. But more importantly, and despite her having heard her voice a year prior, that particular moment in 3009 was a watershed where every cell became slightly more attuned to her essence. The world became as it once was when she was a child, rather, as it ought to have been. 

And after her sermon, Kai took a short leave from her daily activities to venture into the many libraries scattered across the imperial capital, in search of any objective truth in regards to the Empress’s origins. This proved impossible. She would sit in the great hall until the sight of dawn poked its way through the palm trees - scouring every book for hints or fragments of truth about the mother-goddess. Perhaps it was the espresso she often got at the Cafe Myrova - a rather new place in a gentrified part of the jungle, where the influx of students at the nearby humanities college would satisfy themselves with lime pie and orange zest flavored macchiatos - that was scattering her brain and preventing the truth from appearing. And so, she stopped going to the esteemed Cafe Myrova and the barista girl with her great gold spectacles would check the clock at 11:30, then to the small wooden door she left ajar to attract more students into the place and out of the summer heat, wait anxiously for the arrival of her familiar guest with her messy white hair, dark ringed eyes, slender bony hands which poked their way out from the lengthy blue robes known vogue to the citizens of So Loon and close the shop at 3:00 - disappointed that she could not bear witness to Kai, nor bathe in her perfume, which she thought was foreign made. And she often wished to ask her which boutique she had gotten it from, or which merchant down by the boardwalk bazaar peddled it off to her, unknowing that eastern opium had worn itself deep into Kai’s clothes and performed the same function as any strong, oriental cologne. Yet after a month free from caffeine, where her work proved to be just as futile as when she was high on more socially acceptable drugs, she returned to Cafe Myrova at 8:00. The barista girl noticed, grown red in the face, spilled her espresso on the floor, apologized to an uncaring Kai and since then, prepared her coffee henceforth with care and attention as to prevent her absence from recurring. 

It was a strange thing indeed for there to exist no formal record of the life of the Empress. It was all-consuming. She wasn’t working and was evicted so she slept on the couch of the canary-haired master brewer of the Fortuna Electric acidbar in the meantime. Then, after six months of searching, she came across an advertisement for an old venue hidden in the undergrowth of the metropolis, Death’s Legionnaire as it was known - a violent punk showroom that was well past its prime. However, the truth about the place was that it was notorious for its immaculate and well-preserved archives of the NEON Era anarchist underground. So, Kai went over to the place, deep in the heart of the So Loon jungle, until she came across the sign, barely lit, hanging like a stubborn toenail spilling neon blood onto the concrete. A dead end. The place had been burned to the ground. It was a fragment of hope to believe that the Empress might have come from such lowly origins, which would explain such a lack of detail concerning her childhood and her subsequent rise to power. She grew tired and was angered and mortified at such an obscene thought and began to eat less and less each day, as punishment, filling her belly with booze from the bartendress’s stock, until even she had to put it under lock and key.

After exhausting the public libraries of the great Maternal City, Kai wrote over to the Konstantino Family, an ancient colonial House from the whaling kingdom, Faresia, in the hopes that perhaps the archivist there would be willing to share any information in regards to the origin of the Empress. She received no response. Maybe the Empress was a foreigner. And so she went back to the libraries and searched for the Faresian histories detailing a possible reaction towards the newly found Imperium - for she thought that there must exist a disgruntled theocrat that had within them a profound hatred for the ornamental minimalism known in the decor of the worthy citizens of her homeland - but found very few volumes, all written by expats and foreigners. The only mention of the Imperium had been writ without context as to whether it was her own or another. It was in one of the very few volumes written by an actual Faresian, and not some wandering vagrant from the West in search of esoteric wisdom found within the ancient archives of the Great Konstantino Family - though the translation provided was so poor that Kai could not determine if it was written as a jest against it or not - so she disregarded it entirely. Kai decided then to go and visit the reclusive kingdom, in search of first-hand texts, or perhaps a hermit who may hold within them secrets of her elusive Empress - but the civil war there had strengthened and she did not have the proper funds stored so she drank more.

The strangest, and perhaps the most infuriating thing about the entire endeavor was that each book that she carefully examined had mentioned the Empress in all but name. There was a queerness whenever she read the books, and it occurred every time she came across them - so espresso was not to blame - nor was her inadequate sleep; for she took to other opioids to help her drift off faster. Like the sermon that became a catalyst for her search, she had not seen the form of the Empress, and so had no idea of what she could look like. And this problem was shared by just about everyone, she concluded, which would explain why there exists not a single record of her in any volume within the capital libraries. And yet, there would often be musings writ in such a way that was obscure, but powerful, as if the words themselves had a light of their own which switched on whenever she read of lengthy dark hair juxtaposed against all-consuming white. An indescribable warmth or a tenderness that trembled. An unknown beauty gestated from unknown pain. It was such a powerful abstraction, powerful in that the very text itself, when describing these, among many other, traits, would become, in a way, hyper-real. It took a while for her to understand that such subtleties were indeed profound. And once she noticed them, she began to see them everywhere, even in the most unlikely places. Advertisements, beauty commercials, graphic novels, animated harem cartoons, fashion week models. Soon, the world was lit aflame with the knowledge that everything had traits of the divine presence within. But the abstraction was so elusive that the exacting traits became lost in the flurry of human fickleness. It became to her then, after noticing the unyielding traits of the lush and divine were everywhere and often misrepresented, that the best source of knowledge would be what she had already known within. And so, at the age of nineteen, she began to undergo the task of creating art in the image she had constructed. She wasn’t paid a salary, and she didn’t bother to appeal, rather, beg, to the Muulan Master Artist Fund, for her credentials were void, as she had no formal education, and she did not want to be associated with the poststructuralists that often hoarded the bursaries, who, according to Kai, had been toeing the line of understanding and blasphemy so thinly, that the very idea of them receiving funds was a reason not to apply in the first place

And so, creativity became a necessity for Kai, who hadn’t worked in nearly a month. She had acquired a few thousand dollars after a few collectible retro games she had in her possession increased dramatically in value. The company had gone bankrupt as a result of an affair between the CEO and her many mistresses, each a high-ranking developer within the company. She put about half of the money into her savings and the rest as an upfront cost to the bartendress Baron, as she liked to be called, into securing a new townhouse for the two to live in comfortably. And as a result of her honesty in regard to her increased lack of sobriety, Baron had found a place with a separate room in the attic, which Kai repurposed into a studio of her own. 

The attic was, during the daytime, so bright from the sun that any screen she had would become unusable in the glare. And at night, she was so lonely, that she could not bear to be alone in the dungeon of a room for more than an hour at a time before she fell victim to recurring thoughts of her ex-lover. The place was unfurnished, for her lack of funds made it unable to purchase anything but a beaten-up desk too heavy to move in the opposite direction of the window. So she took to writing the entire thing by hand. And at first, the cramps prevented her from writing for any lengthy amount of time, which was frustrating. Baron would be at work until late in the morning, slinging drinks for degenerates. Sometimes she wouldn’t come home at all, drugged up on chemical cocktails so varied, it kept her up for days at a time, which was norm for the bartendress’s at Fortuna Electric, who often worked for 48 or more hours straight. Kai hated this, partly because she would, after an hour or so of writing, stumble down the ladder leading up into the attic, check to see if Baron was in her room - door left ajar, bedspread messy and the floor littered with makeup stains and spilled wine bottles - or in the living room - ashtrays strewn about, open boxes of pizza growing cold. Kai’d go onto the small balcony in the back, light a cigarette of her own, and watch the megatalls glow in the summer air. Sirens screamed past dimly lit back alleys and somewhere along the tightly lit corridors, a girl would be shot for a small bag of ultramandarin that she’d hold between her breasts. What sort of family life must one endure for there to be such an end? Maybe it was the opium, or the other array of drugs that kept Kai alive and thriving, but the thought of each and every life down on the streets underneath her balcony being more than the sum of their parts was a revelation that awed her. Like her own searches for meaning, the origin of that voice she heard nearly a year ago, what sort of child could she have been? What were her hopes, dreams or wishes? Did she prefer majespresso from Faresia or Mauvivory? Who was her first love? Did she have children of her own flesh? Did she confide in another by her bedside? Did she sleep at all? Did she eat at all? Was she even human? Is she even real? Does she even exist in a physical space? Or is she a concept, an idea to worship? 

It was arrogance that led Kai to believe she was able to write about such things. She tossed over on her bedspread and pressed her nails against her forearms in shame for crying. And there was that original memory - one that was too good for her to remember, as if she did not deserve good things at all and that the only thing she did deserve were the meager rations given to her for a time as part of her stimulus payout. That accursed feeling! To push away the thoughts that warm the soul was a reflex like any other, for even they lent themselves to tears and Kai did everything to prevent the tides from growing. But it was on nights like these where the softness of the rain as it taps onto the windows beckons forth the thaw. The memories of her servitude existed in a vacuum. And though it would be common knowledge to fear the abyss, especially for those like her who grew up practicing ballet near the edges, it was that pit of darkness, that unending night of unawareness that the Mercenary-Poet knew as a womb for that comforting light. She was amnesiatic for a life before the age of ten. Amnesiatic in the sense that her awareness, which exists as a sort of reimagined self that is constructed as a result of one’s need to survive the trauma of birth, had only formed at the age of ten. The world was ever more bitter to those who have been delayed the opportunity of pre-aware birth.

She saw herself as being unworthy, ascetic of both mind and body, hunched over pieces of parchment that had the remnants of spilled ink, wine, tears and blood all across it, lightened by the weak flames that she had lit as a ceremonial ritual, or the feeble pulse of neon as it crawled in from over the tops of the megatalls and down into her attic room. Purity of will was not made from flesh, bone, tendon or muscle, but from the denial of such indulgences. She had, at one point, given her life to serve such formless ideals, and her broken body was proof of that. Her shoulder had been dislocated so many times from the recoil of machine guns that she walked with a slight hunch and her ears had been blasted from the thunders of cannonfire so much that she was deaf in the right one. But purity of will can only hold the candleflame alight for so long and the night was growing as the anxious weight of darkness collapsed the little waxmen all across her bedroom. The pursuit of art worked on her like a drug, a drug that had her dreaming more wildly than any ornate pipe of opium. A drug of such wond’rous design that it had to have such significance in the discovery of the divine. Each stroke of her pen, each ping of crippling self-doubt, led her back and forth and onto her open balcony where she heard the one, two, three shots of a chrome-laced revolver howling in the distance. A body would fall, unknown to her, yet strange enough, understood as if she were smoking the body’s very essence. 

Pipe down. Back to work, a few paragraphs, a sip of cold Sehn majespresso and juniper whisk; the bottle was nearly finished and she couldn’t rely on Baron to keep stealing from work again. More words poured from her soul like molasses thickened with cornstarch. Back to the balcony. One, two, three. She wished it was her, who fell to the simple pleasures of dying un-renown. There was catharsis to the shared suffering of material woe. The feeling of powerlessness, a knife in the back alley, a gun to the head, an accident off the roof of a home, in the face of death held power - the power of apathy in the eyes of an unknown and uncaring God. Is it just law that prevents the psychosis of the unfed, or is there an inherent curse that dwells within them, that they could overcome? Does God love all her creations equally? Does God take for granted that which she has sculpted out of human clay - the ones with providence deep within their hearts in the hopes that the fallen are able to grasp at the shards of light that fall from the great oaks of the world like little dewdrops of the great god-mother’s grace? 

She needed to get up - and yet the dimness of her room seemed to give her a comfort wretched in irony. It took her a moment to recollect herself, pressing her palms up to the skin of her eyes until the dance routine of renegades moved to the rhythm of the night. It was as if she’d spent the last few weeks in the company of other cybernetic grisettes born from the gutter and swaddled in torn fishnets. Or she had, and it still felt that it was only a moment ago that she collapsed in her room without moving her heels, for the cut on her leg had begun to scab and suddenly she was reminded why she felt the need to relapse in the first place. What a ruse - she was asking for it. Begging, even. Bodies torn up, fresh off the boat in more ways than one, their innards pooling onto the streets lined with needles, pine and plastic. 

She remembered now. Her clone was dead. Long dead. Mikaela’s doing. The thoughts came back, rushing back like through a floodgate, pouring into her being like an ice-bath clad in brimstone. She’s a jealous sort. It didn’t bother her. She’d see the clone again, arms intertwined, tongues twisted with the language of luxury. In the meantime, she took to the pleasure of her own reflection from across the room, her eyes a wildfire, her fingers deep inside her; an acupressure for the anxious android. See her there, a miserable lush lubricated with her own tears. She finished, rose, took note of her shirt, which was torn a bit so fashionable these days, found some leggings and when she was finally able to fully muster a sense of dignity, which had only come about after she banged the smallest toe along the edge of a chair, she took a look out of her window while massaging her foot and saw a great crowds gather from the depths of the avenue bathed in a deep crimson light. Her face was a mirror. Her window was open and she was not the quietest girl on the block. 

The longer she spent in her room, the more she saw the faces of glowing girls with robes writ with holy scripts, watching her from afar, eyes like lions. Kai Miranda, in her blissful state of comfort, to which her jade pipe had known no greater friend, could not spend another evening in its company. The glowing girls gazed back at her, an abyss of light, judging every ounce of self-apathy and neglect. Why should she find herself in any sort of untimely disquiet? Her namesake work warrants time spent with herself, a necessary period not spent in the vicinity of gunfire and which enjoyment ought to be respected to the fullest extent of the body. 

Baron’s door was still left ajar - unwarmed, yet heated with the girl’s own feelings of self-worth and determination. Kai shivered, clothed herself and smiled weakly at the sight of her wearing her single top-of-the line brand name shawl, which she hung over one shoulder as she liked. It was one of the few gifts she had that was worth much of anything. She held her arms that were bruised at all the wrong places, and went out, hooded and cloaked, to join her roommate at the end of the world.

---

Kai Miranda went to Fortuna Electric by a different route. The usual had her go down and around the underpass stretched out over the open plain of the metropolis, where the echoes of thunder announced their thralls of rain. The protection was not warranted now and she was aware that she might not make it before her hair collapsed in the weight of the dew. Tonight, in the shade cast by claws of lightning, the long way uphill had been calling her to climb. 

Deep was the dark. And the denizens of the urban night all had atop their heads the fabricated light of halos mocking the divine. Shards of artificial luminescence dotted all around her, each accompanied by mists of their own lingering subconscious. Shawls of minimalist design were worn by all the passersby, mainly reds and blues - some violet, but rare as it matched those with ivory colored hair more, which was not in vogue now. There was a quietness, a stillness, despite the frenzy, not frenzy, though one look at the scenery would give one the impression of some unordered chaos. But in each of them, an order had been found, interpreted, and subsequently made proper. Soft synths harmonized with the roar of rolling metro cars and the streets chimed with the rustle of trees dancing in the maytime air. A slow walk up made all the difference. She had not thought it necessary to exercise, for her diet did enough to maintain the slenderness that she desired, but it was the coolness of mint that she found herself craving, so she went down and onto the streets of plenty and was at peace in the company of vendors pouring forth emerald chai in long proboscis-like pots lengthened to attract buyers from all around. 

Up and up, the ruelle opened. Sharp metal screamed in the distance, disembodied voices sang with the rain. It was an evening lit by the power of memory. Vendors stood en guard in front of their neon-covered carts bathing in the rays of retail. Behind them, cloistered in the shadow-thick, there was a group of girls huddled near one another, standing just under the concrete heavens, sheltering them from the rainbow-colored rain. Some had taken their sandals off to feel the flood of warming baptism on their feet, some had their hair so tangled up and matted they looked like coven witches. From Kai’s vantage, their shivering lips hushed no tones, but a silent language that beckoned their isolation. Kai felt that deluge wash all around her as she pressed on the growing storm. Pine needles floated like rafts and Kai felt, in that moment, as if she were witnessing the death of an antediluvian world. Watching the lost girls from a distance was like she had come across some Enochian text, or deeper, as if they were all in the likeness of a premature Sophia. 

They embodied the lunar presence, yet, Kai knew them as a sun hidden behind the veil of night and was drawn to them despite feeling as if she ought not gaze in that general direction. They held each other close as if they had never seen the rain, nor drank from the cosmic wellspring; rather, it was as if they feared the secrets suspended in water. One held her hand out, in a gesture knowing Kai had nothing to give, but instinctual to both the girl swaddled in wet lace and Kai Miranda, who paused just before them, they watched one another as if they were given the gift of theophany. 

They had the face of those who knew hunger intimately, yet had only recently tasted bread and had temporarily forgotten it. There were four in total, two of which sat before her. One had her arm over the other, who sat clutching a wound on her thigh that had begun to bleed through her fingertips. There was another, a bit taller than the others, perhaps older, who held a rusted blade at an angle. The fourth slept on the concrete, her body strewn about, her soft forearms a pillow. The wounded one, as if embarrassed, wept softly on her guardian’s shoulder, while the latter looked onwards, keeping her hand outstretched out towards the rain. Thunder was their stomach pain. The goodness left in their eyes lit up the night in sharp, angled movements. 

There was, in that instant, a thought that came across Kai Miranda; a thought that, initially, made her feel as if it were a distraction, a reflex of sorts, in response to the scene before her, to which she was forced to experience; the rain a toxic paralyzer. It was as if she were witnessing the event from within the realm of history, rather, that these nomadic vagrants, to which the maternal city had no short supply of, had instilled a paradox of humanity in both her and those with any semblance of power. Is humanity that which embraces the luxury of human existence? Is there not a prerequisite to experiencing the ontology of culture as it were, the delights of an evening meal consisting of ripened cheeses, grapes plucked from virgin vineyards, hand-fed by handmaidens dressed in veils, their flesh acting the part of digestif, their liquor an ambrosia that gives one the great feeling of intoxication that allows such languid reminiscing on the nature of their being? Does one need to have their needs met in order to truly know what it means to be human, as in, self-cultivation for the sake of knowing the simple truths, as a way to stave off indigestion? 

But each one of those girls held each other close as if the rain was sign of something greater, apocalyptic in a sense, like the thought of being in a place that had significance out of one’s control, akin to watching the divine press her slender foot in glass slippers as she descended to a realm of undeserving men.  If Kai had been younger, she would have liked to dodge the storm by means of hopping from one rooftop shelter to another, believing each droplette of water to be boiling as if God had grown ill from the evil of her creations and subsequently prepared lemon tea to calm her inner worry. She’d of liked to laugh as the rain fell onto her face, and if the off chance of her applying eyeliner was something she thought would make her heart beat louder, then having it smudge her nose would be a reminder of her own authenticity. Or if the sole droplette were to chill her backside so exposed then maybe it would make her feel that much more alive. And yet as the girl marched onwards into the thick of the storm, the rhythms of the water had not relaxed her like she was nodding off, but instead reminded her of the wonders of morphine as it would do to her the same without the discomfort of a wet and heavy overcoat. 

But as the Mercenary-Poet pressed on, the rain knew itself unwelcome. Unwelcome in the worst sort of way, for it had been a long while since there were any thunderstorms like the sort that beckoned forth the calming embrace of a mother still damp from the drawing of blinds and weak from having to shut every window left open. And in her care made manifest through careful lit candles littered all about the kitchen and living room left to the anxious weight of darkness, there was that stillness that Kai knew intrinsic to when she had nodded off to opium or the calming sense of safety when hypnagogic. Is there any greater shelter than castles built of cloth and lace? As the rain pounds around the ramshackle home, would a girl know of anything better than for her mother to get on all fours to join her in the tent she crafted near her bedside? It was this memory that made Kai avert her eyes to the masses calling her to save them from drowning and away from the girls standing with hands clasping one another, shivering bodies made warm by the feeble thought of drying off with another’s shirt. And though Kai’s own was damp but not wet to remain futile, some memories may linger for too long to become actions and so she pressed on, praying that they find a warmth of their own. 

She lived at the bottom of the hill, near an old megatower that had the seduction of a factory warehouse, so naturally, it appealed to a sizable minority of anarchists, street-punks and runaways who had tastes stemmed from the insertion of industry in their veins. They had become the very dirt of the earth, grown from it like fungi - they were party animals, drinking proud and huffing keiff until the wee hours of the morning, just for them to wake and die for another, a brave enough thing; like oil lit with chlorine, it was an instant enlightenment that they so worshiped - the making of fire and gas. 

She groaned up the mountain, curving around the exposed belly of the city, where she heard the few shots earlier in the evening reverberating around the thick concrete hidden from the light by another overpass. Atop the hill where the entryway into a secluded residential grove, the trees clustered about each other until the streets branched off and became paths in the urban woodland, neatly carved out of the earth, with slender lanterns guiding the way into the fold. Up above, joining the road by steep-stairways, thatch-cut treehouses lined the way. Monician bistros known for whale tartar with lemon zest, streetwear from the cities of Hathamber and Kinnoki, the former known especially for its adherence to the arcane - robes fashioned with cotton and furs to hold against the bitter cold of the mountaintops to the east. Drunken fellows wandered about, seduced by glassware adverts nearest a local blower known to enthusiasts of Faresian fire-water. Kai had gone in there once, in search of a proper glass as a gift to Baron, who had the audacity to drink thousand dollar bottles with the finesse of an old lush. “Now, here, see? The glass? Sit up, you’re spilling it all over the cedarwood. Have some dignity, Baron. Drinkslinging isn’t an excuse for disordered drunkenness, you can still be a slosh with suave.” She had quite liked the gift, partly because she had given it to her for reasons twofold: to curb her drinking by preventing her from uncorking the bottles with her teeth, and second, to have her as a reminder whenever she felt the urge to indulge. 

It was an odd thing to see that the purveyors of fine glassware were not the sort of people that benefited from restraint the most. Kai could not openly state this, as she herself had substance issues of her own, but those who spent good money on quality crystal or hand-blown goblets often had in their hands small bags of local vogue - kashmir, scarves for each and every outfit and occasion, shawls scrawled with Near East decoralia, mockxotica lingerie, two or three bottles of Cabernet, Maranese cheeses (one ripened and one aged in cast oak barrels; imported from the pastoureaux in the Algyr Plateau after their harvest, where saisons would sit to stew in wild yeasts for funk and flavor.) The sorts of things that those who had found in them the strength to wear the same pair of leggings for a week straight and snort ultramandarin with old rusted keys would find more abhorrent than the shared company of a few other lost souls who had the humility to rest by open trash cans lit aflame with tinder made from their own hopes and dreams. 

She had no reason to see Baron other than her dungeon had grown drafty. Though she wanted to get drunk, and she knew that she could not seclude herself for much longer, and that, despite her lengthy seclusion, her unannounced presence would give her the attention she so craved - she wanted to see God, or at the very least, hear her voice. And if that were impossible, then a sign, a fragment of some divine truth must show itself to her, to give her a reason to depart her attic room. And in the quiet expanse of one’s own thoughts, she was a nomad with no furs to sell. It had been a slow and arduous journey to where she was at now. Every iteration at uncovering Her divine truth had gone unnoticed, leading her back and forth down unfamiliar rabbit-holes until she emerged unaware that the darkness had consumed her. The Fortuna was known for its denizens, and when she came across its bare black walls and ominous totem poles, she was swallowed up by a vast sea of the unwanted and disillusioned. 

The Fortuna Electric Acid Bar was where the illusion of adulthood carelessly exalted the virtues of the unassuming child. This is to say that although there was no malice in its existence, consider it a systematic sort of thing that exists as a necessary evil. See the girl with her eyes so fierce. Her vogue a gift from the captain of the cheer team who’d have driven her afterschool to give her some shoes or a blouse that no longer fit. Consider a senior to be akin to a god, wherein the newly dressed freshmanette had about her the heart of a fawn with the eyes to match. She’d have spent the day after in a sort of high. They’d buy a gram for three times the price - consider it a steal and then stumble out the same path that Kai so knew to the great acid bar before them. “You wanna go in there? I don’t know ‘Kayla. Wasn’t someone killed here last night?” 

22. Female. Stabbed to death with a stiletto. “They got killer vibes here, man! Don’t be a pussy, Kai. Drinks are on me.” 

They liked to be surrounded by themselves, for they knew nothing of family in the known sense of the word. Kai went in, paused at the sound of phantom heels on dark marble, and was met instantly by the tender at the counter, who shouted her name in a true tone of joy from across the way and atop heads dyed a multitude of colors, over hands decked with blood, bruises and many-rings, across bodies resting over broken sofas - they dreamed of other realms with ornate jade pipes in one hand and pint-glasses full of liquid lysergia in another. Paint peeled from the interior, and was replaced with photos of girls, half naked and dressed like old tiki bars, in front of waxed surfboards. More boards hung from the rafters and chandeliers made from whale ribs held lengthy candles that masked the intense aroma of stale booze and cherry perfume. 

It was like a dungeon, or some demonic ritual-room that worshiped their inner Bacchus. Some lounged about with their iron resting on the wooden tables in front of them - they were lions in the heat of summer. And like lions in heat, the namesake of the place had an electricity that pulsed within all their veins, eyes hung half-open, hands always atop another’s thigh, hair messy with the dew that condensed all around them like a collective perfume. And when their hands would move, either to grab martini glasses filled with such luscious violet pastels or to embrace the cheeks of whoever was closest to them, a small dot under one of their ears would mimic a tiny jellyfish that swam up the surface of the sea in the evenings, bioluminescent dots strewn about the wet of the world. And their forearms held that resemblance, like freckles, but deeper, for it had become vogue to include an array of small dots underneath the softness of their skin, each a different order, like night skies. Constellations formed in many patterns and tones until the setting resembled a night sky at witch hour. A woman would whisper into another’s ear and like the hairs that prickled atop the back of one’s neck, the shimmer of the dots would flutter like insects caught beneath their flesh. Kai could taste the sensuality of the place, sweet like sweat on skin. It was casual enough to warrant her the ability to lessen her guard, but alluring enough to make her vigilant, for she knew that clarity of thought was the calm before the erotic storm. 

And though the girl looked out of place with her oversized sweater with sleeves that fell over her hands, she bore on her face the look of nondescription as it were - the sort of plainess that occurs whenever somebody is going through the motions of any particular activity. And within the Fortuna with its entrance doing nothing to hide it from the thoroughfare, there sat on her kashmir couches the warmth of others. But to Kai, who pushed past others with the edges of her sleeves torn and tattered with a touch soft enough to instantly fill the hearts of anyone who had been yearning for it, they all looked cold and distant in a way that her fragile earnestness to do good could not bear to warm. 

She was good enough. If goodness is sort of reflexive endearment, wherein to be good - as in the holistic sense rather than anything virtuous - is to be unaware of one’s own smallness and meekness, then Kai was a saint that reveled in the shade of the despondent. She walked with hesitation, stopping and going and holding her arms - which did nothing to make her look inconspicuous. She stood around and waited for Katie to open the seats at the bar, taking note of the clientele. 

Even here, the rebellious youth of the Maternal City would be frightened of the authenticity on display. There on each table sat a small white light that lit the souls of all those who sat around its communal synthetic flames and spoke with their own subtle motions towards one another. A thousand words could be said in full meaning by moving one’s finger against the other for a brief enough moment for an eye to flutter in response. Deep violet and chrome machinery carved seduction lines along the edges of their frames and some had shoulders fitted with open circuits as to enhance not only their combat prowess but the allure of their flesh as it would appear from a loose strap holding the whole thing together.  

And though the vogue of the day was to hold oneself in a sort of restrained minimalism - which Kai found herself adhering to - the denizens of the Fortuna Electric Acid Bar were foreigners to the current cultural zeitgeist. As goodness was to endearment, so too was this mantra uttered silent to all of Her children. The juxtaposition of outward expression being that of a sin not for any reason other than excess is ugly on the appearance and an overloaded face of mascara and jewels holds a sort of chaos that does not match the tune of the Maternal City and its sense of wonder. But the girls of the Fortuna who were older than Kai and had grown in the shade of night before the Empress had lived in an age of regression where how one looks often can be the marker of life and true meaning in an uncaring nocturnal metropolis. Though the sentiment was kept alive by those who had known no other truth, the sediment in pitchers of ale catered to those sorts who likened their own lives of living truthfully  in accordance to the Will. They were often filled to the very brim with dark amber of the highest ABV for each droplet of accursed brew had to possess not only every molecular signifier of unaltered ale but also the highest percentage of life suspended between the particles of condensed wheat and yeast. And so, the girls of the Fortuna who perpetuated the chaos of their childhoods onto the world in a sense of endearing honesty all surrounded Kai, who began to eye Baron down in the attempt to gravitate her attention away from the other bartendress Katie and her infernal closeness to the canary-haired drinkslinger. 

In the few years that Kai had known Fortuna Electric to be a home, millions of girls had passed through - girls who spent their whole lives in and out of wards, either as wards themselves or wearers of paper thin robes that held no modest pride like their inner city counterparts. Most of them, Kai knew, would never have a real family, and probably would end up homeless or muling for some offshoot gang that was only left alive to be used as bait. The more she thought about it, the more it seemed that the place, at least, with all its anti-corporate sensibilities and pseudo-revolutionary decor, was made half-real through the regularity of some of the patrons - war weathered women who fought against the Anaximander Corporation all those years ago, who now, aimless as they are, find meaning in those small bits of comfort like hands held against the hair of the broken girls who sold themselves to those depraved enough to buy their souls like pieces of hard candy. Broken girls who were ushered in from the pounding of the rain and horrid lovers - they knew the fires of the night hours - and the Fortuna had become a haven for volk of no renown. There was no middling middle management, nor any corporate overlords that dictated which brews to serve - the Fortuna Electric was owned by the working girl and her alone. Yet those old souls who all dressed like it was still 2995 - tight clothes, big hair, many-rings and knife’d mascara - were akin to aunties. And they each had about their persons, the likeness of the archangels dressed in lingerie. In the evening-time, they would venture into each and every haunt across the great city of So Loon in search of the finer things - and yet the greatest irony was that their persons still possessed the heart of anarchists. And like all things, where the holistic health of society holds true the inner disquiets of her citizens, here too did the songbird sing. Sheltered away in the great acidbar were remnants of old - the grime-ridden 80s and 90s. Growing from bony fingers, smoke climbed and obscured the rot of the ceiling, which was built to withstand typhoons, but not the flow of time. So, within the cave there were those who still clung onto the decaying wooden walls as if time had no meaning, rather, it was a repeating dialectic against the fabric of human thought, and there were those who noticed the regulars with all their kitchy street-punk sensibilities, often from wealthier families burgeoning from the growing middle class - new implants, Muulanwear that hung like a waterfall, draping off their slender bodies, pseudo-sceptresses commodified to mimic the new divine influencers that watched over the imperium. These were the newer crowds, either fresh out of high school, or even still attending, for an older sister can sometimes be more of a God than she has any right to be. And the aunties with their late millennium vogue watched over their little goslings. They rested in the shade of the newfound comfort that they so casually forgot had been brought about by their own suffering. They had grown to accept the inner cacophony of a generation that had not known ontological horror. The turmoil of one’s own nomadic gnosis, ever fleeting, when juxtaposed towards that which is real, ever present in all peoples, a black against white, a prisoner in a soft lacen bedroom - an unknown beauty gestated from an unknown pain - had been lost in translation. One can only paint an apple so many times, in so many different ways before it’s presented as a red splat of automatic art. No amount of explanation in regards to it being a new artistic movement would be able to justify its existence. And so, the aunties who watched over the working girls of the Fortuna had only known one thing - chaos - and though the girls had no experience in the shaping of the society they had lived in, that being warfare, they had grown ill to the war within their own minds, and the aunties all pitied them. And this had become vogue these days for they had all grown weary of material things, finding meaning in revolutionary ideals - preferring vague whataboutisms in regards to spiritual liberation, as opposed to the boring syndicalism of a worker’s union. And those women who prided themselves on having sacrificed their childhoods, in the hopes that such vulgar rituals would evoke a zeitgeist, and it had, found themselves busy sheltering the younger, who were shell-shocked in a different way - lonelier than their aunties ever were; their collective search for meaning was an evil to those who bled for its tangible counterpart. 

Gentrified elites 

Have no concern for the 

Truth, as it is known

And so Kai went and met Baron at the bar and was greeted with three shooters lined up parallel to streaks of bright orange dust, edges pasted with leftover drinks still clinging to the countertops, and indulged. She stared wide-eyed at her roommate, who leaned in and spoke past the loud bass of Deco House and the cries of drunken revelry. She glared over at the group of girls behind her friend. 

“God help us all. Here for inspiration? Do you want it with gin or vodka?” 

Kai rolled her eyes and held up two fingers.Baron put her hands together, bowed and reached up for a bottle on a high shelf, her shirt barely able to cover the array of tattoos she had scrawled on her back. The bottle fell into her hands and faint applause echoed behind her. 

“Top shelf vodka, huh?” 

“Ok, Dad. Listen, it’s Agathean. And if that pitiful nation is known for one thing; it’s spirit. “That, and their oysters.” 

Baron wretched comically. Then held her hand to her mouth as the real stuff had come up. She paused, squatted for a moment to let it pass, and stood back up, a wide smile wrought on her face. 

“I’ll leave you to revel at the thought of slurping yonic snot from open shells.” 

“To answer your question - yes. I’m a bit dry at the moment.” 

“You’ve come to the right place.” Baron declared, setting the glass down in front of her friend. “Drink up, Vodka will only do half the work.” 

Kai rolled her eyes and raised her glass. “Skyl. I don’t suppose you’ll be back home anytime soon.” 

“Nope. Got a new girl supposed to come in a few days ago. Then she didn’t. But you know, it’s difficult finding able bodied people to work here. A whole load of issues, and listen - I don’t blame them. It’s hard enough working down on So Loon City. Those girls have no protection. Listen Madame - I know you’re some ex-NEON Era hotshot that slid between the cracks, undetected. But I’m not going to have to pay protection to you and your goons.” 

Kai raised her brow as if to show that she was attentive to Baron’s dramatic timbre. 

“So, what? A new girl wants to make a name for herself at ol’Fortuna - and she doesn’t show?” 

“Listen, if I had a nickel for everytime a girl from So Loon City came in here, dressed all prim and proper, with her best leggings and a tailor made suit her madame had gotten her when she had a client that owns half the bars on Rosenthaal Avenue, I’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s strange that it happened more than once.” 

“I don’t see the issue here. So, you’re shocked that so few girls come in here to work?”

Baron opened her arms and motioned around her. Kai looked around in their motion, unfazed. 

“Take a look around. All the bartendresses here are overworked. Sex work these days is closer to being a high school teacher. You get so much time off, so many protections. There’s a lot that still needs to be changed, you know, the whole ownership of another human being thing. And listen, I’m not a callous good-for-nothing, right? I’m hip and I know that it’s still hard work doing what they do. And those unfortunate enough not to work for some agency, well, we take them in here, and that’s what Fortuna’s become these days. A hostel. There’s no reason for girls to come in, shaking and crying, bruised and bloody. I’ll have none of that, and honestly Kai, it would be really nice if I could hire you to go out and clean the vermin off of the streets, and we’ll discuss that another time. And don’t think of me as being ungrateful - I’m glad that we focused on the lives of the most unfortunate as a priority. But they have so many protections that it’s time now to focus on the rest of the working class. And how overworked we are, and how are own lives haven’t changed since 2995.” 

Baron was the sort to always exist in contradiction, relative to the others she surrounded herself with. Not to say that she didn’t have any concrete morals - the use of the word is in regards to any of her opinions, which were law to her - rather, her appearance, which had the charm and endearment one feels when in the company of a group of elderly women who remark on the ability to consume an armyboat’s worth of food and still retain the slenderness they all envied, had that semblance of controlled mania. Canary-headed often referred to not just the tropical banana coloured hair that she held up with numerous pins so her black roots made her resemble a bumblebee - but that her profession warranted her to mimic the little cage-bird in more ways than one. From behind her wooden bar, where the far side curved inwards - and she chose this spot so she can lean against it and sway drunken fellows with her bare skin pressing atop the wood - she watched the frenzy of human life with all of their moral contradictions. And the thing that gave her comfort, despite working the long hours that she did, which finally gave her some iota of peace in regards to her finances after several years of coping with the contradiction of serving hundred dollar cocktails, only to return home after working three doubles to slam a 12-pack of warm Kendall Ribbon Brew. She was that caged bird, only she held the key. From behind her bar, there was a distance between her and them - where she shared those feelings of drunkenness, ennui and existentialism with all the other bargirls; a reverse panopticon where she could project all her insecurities outward, reveling at the thought of “I may be bad, but not that bad.” 

And so, she grabbed from her tiny pocket, a small bag that had been poking its way out all evening and tore it open on the bar table. Like a cat at the sound of an open tin can, a gaggle of others soon surrounded her as she began to line up the dust with a nail filer. 

“Hey, take it easy on that stuff.” Kai said, leaning back. “Two lines is enough.” 

“Yes, Mom, I’ll come home safe and sober and not piss behind a dumpster again.” Baron rolled her eyes.

A few more girls in their wasp-coloured uniform congregated behind Baron, wide-eyed and thirsty at the thought of free stimulants. Kai held her arms back, her face twisted into an interesting mix of disgust, amusement and pity as she watched them all partake in their sleep-repelling ritual. Animals, thought Kai. As if I’m any better. She lowered her sleeves and hugged her waist. Thank God it’s dark here. 

“Ok, listen, I need you to do me a favour.” Baron said, eyes watering, as she held her nose. “You’re in need of inspiration right?” 

Kai gazed over to her left, where she saw a couple in each other’s embrace, unaware of the chaos surrounding them. An island of unassuming bliss. She scowled and finished her drink to let the vodka rest and burn atop her lip as a reminder. 

“Yes. Though I have a hunch that it often comes when one’s least expecting it.” 

“Or.” Baron began, leaning in on the counter. “When you do something unexpected, in order to summon it. Look behind, do you see her by the corner there, with the red handbag? She comes in here every week with her gaggle of harpies, see them all in a row? One of them, the fat one, went to the bathroom a moment ago. They’re awful. They keep ordering almond sours, and they’re a mess to make. Absolute savages.” 

Baron stood straight and plucked a knife from a magnetic strip behind her. She handed it to Kai, who inspected its craftsmanship, which was very good for the simple purpose of cutting lemons. 

“Go and shank them with this knife. I’ll destroy the evidence, the bougie swine. That would make for some good inspiration for your work. Or, at the very least, it’ll be fun to watch.” 

Baron laughed as she filled a glass to the brim, head spilling from the edges, and tossed it over to the girl at the other end who had torn off the sleeves of her shirt. It spilled a bit, but she was too drunk to care. Her eyes flashed payment, a soft teal. 

“You remember the cartoon back when we were kids, that detective show with the elephant?” she continued. 

“No, but it’s probably because I’m too tired to remember.” “No, you know. Do you remember when we used to walk by Ideopolis, when they had the televisions all in front? There was that show, and I know you used to be quite font of it because you fancied the girl with the yellow midriff, actually, I remember you had a onesie you used to wear of the elephant -”

“Alright, I remember!” Kai said a bit louder than her normal voice. She waved her hand and was occupied with the group sitting near the open terrace, who were fighting aimlessly. She had been trying to guess at what they were arguing about. “Yes, we used to go down there to meet with the Monicians.” 

“Well, that cartoon.” Baron smiled at the thought of recollection. “That detective had a small blue book, she’d always carry it with her, to put all her notes in, or whatever. But, there was that thing that would happen at the end of each episode, remember?” Baron motioned with her hands, as if their movements would elicit the memory of the animation. “When everything was lost, and you were always too stupid to believe in the nonsense plot, that the detective would somehow meet her match in that episode - do you remember the one when she went on some safari in Yellow Prairies, to find the poacher who’d be out there killing all the exotic animals? You know, it’s funny now, when you think about it, because of all the political implications that were going on, but even we had no idea the writers were talking ill of the Ru Moderna peoples who had colonised them - anyways, yes, she, the detective, ah, yes, that’s it, Detective Abernathy,  yes that’s the name. Anyways, Detective Abernathy, that episode where she went on that safari and the poacher had left a shit ton of clues and Detective Abernathy had no idea on how to find the poacher, remember. But! (Baron enunciated, both with her hands and intonation.) Along the way, she had pieced everything together, subconsciously, within the blue book right?” 

Kai said nothing, and found the edge of her finger a rather amusing thing to chew upon. Baron picked the knife from the table and stabbed it into the wood, an inch from Kai’s forearm. She yelped and rubbed it, a dumb smile wrought across her face. 

“Listen to me, when I’m speaking, lest I start charging you per word.” 

“If only I could get paid by the word.” Kai muttered. “What does this have to do with killing your clientele in cold blood?” 

“Well, not so much cold blood. They’re all trashy, wannabe elites who’d sell you out in a second if it meant they’d get a position at Anaximander. Anyways, it’d be for inspiration.” Baron declared. “You already know what the truth is, in your writing. It dwells within, and I’m certain that you’ve written it without knowing. And if you’re still unsure, and if you truly do require a dominatrix muse, take this knife and go to town. The big one’s back and that should give you enough fat to chew on ‘til tomorrow.” 

Kai almost smiled and hid it with tight lips. She tore the knife from the wood and began to fiddle with it, like a dagger. 

“Truthfully, they haven’t paid. And the other bartendress needs to go home. She’s been working for 74 hours straight and she’s gonna go into a coma if she doesn’t take a break soon.” 

“You guys really need to lay off the ultramandarin.” 

“Oh, but I suppose then if you’re around, I’m allowed to indulge -”

“And the last time I had any was months ago, and you, the stuff practically lives rent free in your nose.”

Baron sniffed and leaned against the corner of the bar. Her eyes widened and shifted ‘round their sockets like an owl’s head. 

“Kai, Kai. We need to indulge if we want to make money - and it’s not I who’s to blame - but those dreadful Monician pharmaceutical companies.” 

“Those dreadful Monician pharmaceutical companies who you and your goons raid the storage units of -” 

“I know, it’s dangerous, and I’m no expert mercenary, but if only I knew a big, strong, brooding one with combat implants and nothing to live for.”

Kai glared over from the top of her glass at Baron, who had taken the knife back and began poking the peels of a pile of lemons sitting at the counter.

“Or, you could go back down on Rosenthaal Avenue.” Kai continued, as if Baron had truly meant no malice, even as a friend, and that her jokes were done under the influence. “Ideopolis is still there, right? And they don’t have the tv’s in front anymore? That’s a shame. I remember when we used to have to split the gang up in three, one would stay back on Dream’s End, the other to get food from the market on Jarhu Koi and the last walked up Rosenthaal to meet with those Monicians, who I am quite certain, still sell arms and psychocombatives.”

“Those Monician dealers are still kicking, eh? You’ve heard the news, they’ve started dealing with Kannesenaki. Not sure why, but you know how those animals are.” 

“They’ve made a decision then. Not a very good one, but it’s certainly better than remaining static, selling stolen iron to gang leaders, arming them all for their glorified cat and mouse game.” 

Baron had begun to speak with another bartendress, who had begun to complain about the girls behind Kai. Baron sighed loudly and handed Kai back the knife. 

“Yes, yes. And you know what, you’ve said it. They’ve made a decision. That’s exactly why you’ve hit a wall with your book. Go on, do it. Make them pay, please. Katie is gonna fall over, and look.” Baron said as she lifted Katie’s arm up over her head, to inspect it. Katie covered her mouth with her other hand to contain her exhausted laughter. “She’s thinner than any lush here, no matter how much I make her eat.” 

Kai lit one and hid herself in a veil of smoke. 

“Oh, I’m sure she’s super into that.” Kai muttered as she took the knife. She stabbed it back into the bar again. “You’re high as a kite. There’s a fine line between mere stimulants and smuggled military psychocombatives.” 

“You are no fun, Kai Miranda. Leave the knife there, so nobody knows to mess with you.” “If I had to kill anybody, do you think I’d do it with a commercial kitchen knife you bought wholesale on Rosenthaal Avenue? See here, Sireen Cuisinery, writ on the edge of the steel -”

“Sireen Cuisinery? That’s on Hoi Skahl Road, right?” said a voice to Kai’s left. The couple had been going at each other for the entire night, and had split for a moment. “See, I told you they renamed the street. It’s not Hoi Skahl Road anymore.” 

Kai tapped the ashes into her empty whisky glass. 

“They changed the name almost ten years ago.” Baron said, motioning to Katie, who had squeezed past her to return to her table. “Here for the temples? The jungle? Tourist?” 

“Anniversary.” she said, her hair a mess from the other’s hands. “We’re up from Kinnoki. Last time we were here in Muulu would have been right about ten years ago.”  

“What a strange time to come here.”

“Oh, please.” added the second. “It’s exciting, the change of scenery that was going on. Not many times can you say you’ve made love in an old dive bathroom to the sound of machine guns blazing away in the night.”

“Oh, but you’re a veteran! I can see your brand on your wrist there. That symbol! Lily’s drunk, she doesn’t mean to offend. But I have utmost respect for people like you. You must be so full of stories. Do you paint? No, surely not. Too gory! Music? Ah, no. Too chaotic. Let me think.” 

Lily and her partner held their chins. Kai scowled.

“Author. Poet. That’s it! I’m certain that’s what you are!” “Mercenary.” Kai added, falling into her drink in an attempt to end the conversation. 

“Mercenary, huh? It’s still poetry or painting, though in a different way. Though, I’m certain that you still harbour those same virtues beaten into you as one of those child soldiers, who, I reiterate, have the utmost respect for.” 

“How so?” Baron asked, much to Kai’s disapproval. 

Lily hopped closer to Kai, to the spare stool in between them. 

“Well, poetry is just that” the other began. “And I should say first, my name’s Lily too. Yes, Lily and Lily, it’s very delightful. Anyways, yes, poetry is a lot like cooking and murder. And painting too, I should say. Take for instance, your medium. You paint on canvas, yes? Unless you’re one of those regretful Hathamberese, what’s her name, Lily? You remember that exhibition we saw a few days ago. No, not Jeanette Barella - ah - Jeanette Basquille. Yes, well, there’ll never be anybody else like her, she painted on old cardboard boxes and sheets of steel. But, I’m getting ahead of myself.” 

“Two waters.” Lily asked, holding her fingers up. “Or actually, you look dry, give the girl over here something strong. I need to sober Lauren up a bit.” 

Kai turned back to Lily and Laurene, who had already finished their glasses. Laurene hiccuped. 

“Now, right. You’re not Basquille, so you aren’t painting on old bits of plaster, but let me tell you that the bandwidth of the soul is ever closer when you paint. If you take any and all art forms and quantify them, you’ll see that your hands  (Lily lifted hers up, a small wedding band sat on her pinky finger) are the closest things to your soul. Some people these days say it's the hair, but that’s the heart, and there is a difference. And so, you paint and paint, and even if you aren’t an old Romantic, perhaps you’re an Impressionist, and you care more for light and movement and feelings. You sit there, in all of your sensibilities - ““With a summer dress like all the Muulan girls.” added Lauren, who pointed over to Kai from behind Laurene. “Navy shawl, like all the girls in the southern city, lengthy white hair, high-top hypebeast shoes, are those Kinnokian? I’ve noticed there’s a trend these past few months, or so I’m told, to fall into Vovetslavl vogue. Our capital is so much more ahead in fashion than Muulu, you all dress so religiously! As if the Empress herself were to come in here and inspect all of you!” 

Lily put her hand up to cover Lauren’s mouth. She glared longingly at her. 

“Yes, well, to go back, even if you aren’t an automatic artist, you can absolutely agree that you could, if that were your intention, and say, you were in a sort of mood that would allow for such a thing to occur, paint in the time frame you’ve allotted for yourself, even if it's ten minutes. And you’d step back, and see the thing, and if you were satisfied, then that’s it then! The bandwidth of the soul is ever closer when you’re a painter. You couldn’t be some novelist and have the same outcome, and that’s why they’re all alcoholics. But moreover, poetry is the equivalent, right? It’s short, and revels in its simplicity. Now, cooking is methodical, I will admit. Yet, you and your sophistication - I can see that you respect yourself enough to work in the most haute of haunts, so you’ll probably get this more than I, but plating food has that same sensibility, no? What I mean to say is that it’s an abstract form that exists in that temporal space, actually, now that I think about it - cooking is even more of a temporal thing; because the art only lasts as long as somebody else is willing to let it. Imagine a restaurant that prides itself on the art of the food, and you don’t ever have to eat it.”

Kai finished her drink and snapped at Baron for another, who obeyed. She wanted to laugh at the two that sat before them at their vapid pretentiousness, yet found it impossible to even phone a smile to show that she found anything they had to say remotely interesting, let alone true. 

“I disagree.” Kai said, digging her nails into the underside of the bar. “Though, it’s true that poetry is a more violent thing than prose, I would say that the latter has the ability to be more profound, because meditation on a theme requires the soul to ponder the same heartaches ad nauseum.”

“To an extent.” Lily said, lifting her glass of water like it was ale. “But you sure as hell need a strong will to meditate on such themes for so long for it to be as profound as the bloody nature of a poem, or a painting.” 

“We’re art exhibitionists, can you tell?” Laurene laughed, kissing the back of Lily’s neck. “We’re staying over at a rental on Avenue Cartier, it’s above the loveliest little coffee shop.” 

“You don’t say?” Kai said. “Truthfully, these days, I’m not so concerned with the meta-ness of the artistic process. Instead I focus on actually accomplishing something with what I already know. You know,” Kai crossed her legs and cocked her head as she began to stir the toothpick garnish in the now melted drink. “I was out getting my hair done, and my stylist told me that she’d spent the last month and a half filming some documentary. She had been working on her own stuff - she’s an impressionist like yourselves - and the professor of art education at Masser Hill came across her work and wanted her to be the part of an exhibition.” 

“What was the exhibition about?” 

“That’s the thing - nothing. Well, to them it meant everything. But anyway, they met in some cafe and the professor had hyped it up. She’d have all this freedom, the film department would be more than happy to lend some equipment and so on. But you know how it is with academics, being concerned with the meta-ness of art moreso than actually creating anything substantial, right? So she went and met with all the others, and she didn’t know the truth of the entire event until she saw one of the other artists taking rolls of tape, cutting bits and pieces out of it and lining it up like footprints all around the concrete floor and up a railing. My stylist, you know, she’s so funny - very passive aggressive, she goes up to her and asks what she’s doing or you know, like, what’s the significance of your ‘sculpture’ (Kai mocked air quotes as she said this.) And you know what that dumb lush told her?” 

Both Lily and Lauren shook their heads. 

“She told her, ‘what do you think it means?’ Kai roared with laughter, hiding her drunken flushed face behind her hands. “Oh man, what a joke they all are! My stylist actually fucked up my ear a bit because she was laughing so hard, see?” Kai pulled her hair back behind her ear, where a small pink band aid clung to the top of it. “You know, listen. No hard feelings, right? I just - I find it nigh impossible to take any opinion on art seriously from those without a sense of what it is they’re deconstructing. And no, I don’t think that you two are like her. I think it’s, well, unique, that you cut up our traditional garb and splatter paint across it, right?” 

Lily and Lauren smiled back at Kai, who sat alone, as Baron had been ushered over by the other bargirls to deal with their drama. 

“How’s that whisky taste?” Lily asked. 

Kai held up the small glass and rested her chin on the bar, as if that did anything. It was terrible but a point must be made. 

“Wonderful. I can taste the respect and workmanship of the thing. A time-honoured tradition - able to exist by itself. Neat and proper. Un-yielding to the threats of manic change. The whisky tastes the same as it did a hundred years ago.” 

“Virginal, you could say.” Lauren whispered from behind Lily’s shoulder. They had come up close to her, close enough so Kai could make out the tattoo scrawled across Lauren’s clavicle - UNKNOWN BEAUTY. 

“That’s one way to put it.” Kai added. 

“But, Lauren? You’ve seen the advertisement on Rosenthaal Avenue, haven’t you? When we went out to go pick up the ATL from those funny Monicians?” 

Kai’s eyes widened. She absentmindedly placed her glass down, where it hung half off the edge.

“Right!” Lauren snapped her fingers. “Kinnokian whiskey has become trendy here in Muulu. It’s cheesecake flavoured! Kai, you’ve got to try it. We have a bottle.” 

“You’ve got ATL?” Kai asked, staring deep into Lily’s own blue. “The Wrens have been charging a premium for it - now that they’ve added some special ingredient.” “Of course, but you know, we’ve made our fortune in the industry of defilement, as you’ve put it.” 

Kai shook her head, her hand grazed against the glass, which shook a hair towards her. 

“No, that’s not what I meant. Oh, do you think I meant that you two actually aren’t without merit? Of course, it’s not like you’ve come in here naked - you wear our clothes, which I can’t say will be the case for half of the others here.” Kai held her hand for the other to hold, in mock sympathy. “No, I’ve had a bit too much to drink, you know - starving artist and all that. I’ve come for inspiration. Something ATL blotters surely would fix.” 

Baron rushed forth from the other end of the bar at the sound of that holy acronym. 

“ATL? Tell me more.” she said, wide-eyed. 

The place had only grown in intensity since Kai’s arrival. The terraces that surrounded the bar had filled, the interiors had all turned from a seductive murmur to an orgasmic roar. On each of their tables, lit by its own bioluminescence, pitchers of glass in perfect cylinders held a thick syrup of a multitude of colours - lime-green, phosphorescent orange, seafoam blue, bloodwine red. Several spigots hung from the edges of the flasks, where the sludge would pour into their glasses, a new experiment that Baron hoped would put the Fortuna back on the map, that is, the recurring anthology of all the trendy haunts in the Maternal City. “Lysergic Ales will be the new vogue, I guarantee it. I’ve spent weeks, Kai, not weeks, years, studying the flow of the market. The people want to escape, but they want it to taste good. And they want to feel sexy while dreaming.” 

The air shimmered around the glass, and in the darkness that soon swallowed the bar, girls sat in their urban vogue, slouching in the many loveseats that hung around the gastro. Where there were no candles, a vast hearth was at the centre of the place, shielded as to prevent drunken revelry from consuming the haunt in flame and to prevent the heat from escaping. It was already hot enough in tropical South Muulu. The fire was just there to accentuate the form of the others, who, in the pleasures of narcotics, had embraced one another, free from their fabric prisons, hung out in the open air, their own slender bodies submitting to only loose fit robes - some with nothing at all. The little translucent dots of light pulsed in the darkness, flesh so smooth and artificial that if they held their arms before the pitchers of fake light, Kai swore she could see steel beams in place of bones. 

The Fortuna had a reputation. And as the growing trend of gentrification grew within its garden, the seed of unfettered hedonism overtook the violent crassness of its early years. The pitchers of lysergic ales did nothing to help in that regard. The body highs were so strong that she decided it might even be a good business model to charge them per hour on top of the flat fee for the pitcher, for they did nothing but lounge around, uncompromisingly free from shame for their practices of free love and open use, for the only thing separating public drunkenness is if its done on a patio and not on the street. 

The music changed as the night grew hot and long. Above the seats, a chancel hung with the support of black totem poles, carved with a myriad of faces by the native tribes of South Muulu. The Deco House had stopped, as the clientele that came for quick drinks had since left, leaving the Fortuna’s ideal citizens to remain. There, atop the bar and overlooking the rest of the gastro, a masked and robed woman stood before a wall of modular synth-hardware, pulling apart wires and inserting them into other holes. Slow drones bellowed, and sparkles of sine waves shattered in the distant haze. Kai kept drinking, and speaking to the others about art, the nature of poetry, why she was a writer, her time serving in the gang wars to control the city, her views on food and wine, her opinions on the lesser races, the current racial tensions, the environment and so on. She had all standard opinions on the matter, often liberal enough, not too radical - for she believed that the time for revolutions had long since passed, and whether this was because they had reached paradise within the imperium, or because she had aged past immature ideals, this thought eluded her. But as they continued to drink, and as Lauren & Lily kept ranting about how precious their home city of Quates was in comparison to drab old Muulu, and as they kept on trying to touch her as payment for their continued purchase of drinks (Kai allowed it, for she was too intoxicated, and touch starved to care), she tried to find that feeling she knew when she came across those particular words that jumped at her whenever she tried to read about the Empress. Distractions aside, she had come to the Fortuna for this reason alone; to search for inspiration. And although Baron was correct in the assumption that indeed, inspiration lies within, Kai knew she said this because Baron’s view on high literary art were the cartoons that often played on television on Saturday mornings. She couldn’t blame her, rather, Kai blamed herself, for being unable to appreciate such openly joyful works of art, and found it hard to come out of her own head, where the idea that the mournful recollections of suffering often become the best forms of art. 

Maybe Baron was the right one after all. So they kept drinking, in the hopes that the booze would work its magic and a slip of the tongue would give Kai more insight. And yet, she knew what she was looking for - though, she was even unsure of that. For that was the very nature of the situation she was in, it was as if she was in the dark, hand outstretched in search of an object, and even the nature of the object and its form was not known to her, but it was when she grabbed it, would she know that it was the correct thing. Or a fragment of the correct thing. 

Lily had mentioned something when she was going off about her art galleries in Quates of an artist who had painted in the style of a newly fashionable method of abstraction. They were all well sloshed by now, and Baron found every opportunity she could to watch the couple and Kai from a distance, only to butt in whenever one got too close to her. 

“So, Lily and I had gone out back home in Quates, and I should preface first, our love of automatic art is not without merit. Kinnokian painters have a tendency to have their heads in the clouds, often the same themes come about - swirling strokes are very much visible, an emphasis on the sea, you know, with old Faresian sensibilities - colonial villages, aristocracy, blah, blah, blah.” Lily at this point had taken off her jacket, and had sat cross legged in front of Kai, who had rested her drunken face on her hand for so long, she had started to drool. “Yes, well, there’s a discussion to be had on the repressed sexuality of Kinnokian volk, but that’s a different topic, and it’s why Lily and I thrive here in South Muulu. Well, yes, so mechanics aside, the themes of the paintings are very classical, ideal depictions of motherhood, bonnets and all, which I find fascinating, and do you know why?”

Kai shook her head. Baron had gone off to continue working, and intermittently joined into the conversation, only to leave a few minutes after. 

“No,” Kai said. “Though I find it strange - and I ought to know this given, as you’ve said, the recent trend of Kinnokian vogue making its way over to the Maternal City - that there exists a funny little rivalry between drab old Vovetslavl and free-flowing Quates. As you’ve said, the sensibilities of the classical seafaring life - though not romanticised like the Faresian realists - are often represented by the recent neo-impressionists with their emphasis on movement -”

“Yes, that’s it!” Lily jumped from her stool and stood like an old pinup doll before Kai. She pulled from her pocket, a cigarette and a long holder for it. She fumbled for a small flame. “Movement and constant flow. Have you been to either city? It gets a bad reputation - here especially - oh, I’m sure you’ve heard the horrible things your people are doing to the Orangii - but I’d rather not indulge my inner patriot lest I’ve fallen into more liquor.” 

Baron had returned for a moment, and added - 

“Impressionism is so drab - though don’t take this the wrong way, as why put any emphasis on anything at all? Stand back up for me.” 

Lauren, as opposed to her partner, stood up this time. And though she was dressed nearly identical to the other, she had not yet put her hair down, leaving her still resembling all the traits that were aforementioned. 

“Hm - yes, see here. As you’ve said - impressionism requires the existing knowledge of the sensibilities of the established. Faresian fetishes - the sea, individual worth, resilience - all utterly useless in this day and age, sans the sea, of course. Kai can vouch for me, I’ve been yearning for Her all spring. Anyways, yes - I see the ribbons holding your hair up, though they hang loose down around your back, which you’ve exposed. Your hair’s braided nicely - oh, one day I’d like you to do mine like yours. But if I have to ask, if you’re so concerned with deconstruction, why limit yourself to the ideals of old, when you can embrace the chaos that’s all around you? And I know what you’re going to say.” Baron handed her a glass of amber to shut her up. “I know what you’re going to say ‘Oh Baron, if one feels oppressed in the presence of the omnipresent then surely it’s only then that you’re able to have any hopes for revolution.’ And I would say that you’re wrong in this regard - that the very concept of recurring deconstruction exists for its own sake - and that your little nation-state is a lot more beholden to others than it wants to be. Do you want to know why? Because it’s like all the others in this bar. Do you see them all lounge around like cats in heat? Why do you think they wear their clothes so loosely - some have already shed themselves of it. The Kinnokian vogue is not to deconstruct, but to shock and revel in the discord that follows the defilement of things that are good and pure. Like a schoolgirl - and it’s why I detest the current trend that your people have brought to our city these past few years, that the very idea of a uniform holds a stained image. This is why it is not necessary to deconstruct things that are established, because it appears to the rest as adolescent angst. The soul of the dadaist is to break for its own sake.” 

Baron nodded and left to resume her duties. 

“I love her.” Lily declared. “I love her, I really do - but I have to add - because Kinnoki is like an odd middle child, juxtaposed between two vast powers, there will always be that inherent youthful vigour that exists at the twilight of stasis and change. We are the May Nation. We embrace that which is known and cherished and deconstruct it. We’re no dadaists. We understand tradition - our art proves this. But there is more to a painting than the fineness of the strokes, or the varying shades of light. I see you here, regretfully restrained. The volk here in the Imperium, rather, I should say the nation of Okkihaio, also professes that sort of minimalism. Repression. Well, look at yourself - although the vogue in South Muulu certainly has a particularity to it, which you do well to showcase. And even if it appears vulgar, what of it? I would rather appear vulgar to those who are unable to decide for themselves, the meaning of the clothes they wear.”

“Oh naturally.” Kai added. “Natural for you impressionists to be so obsessed with embracing deconstruction. Who knew that defilement could be so alluring?” 

“That depends entirely on what is being defiled and what is being worshipped.” “Or who, rather than what?” “All the same.” Lily sipped and glared at Kai from behind her glass. She raised her head to beckon her to continue. “The who’s become the what’s when they’re being defiled.” Lily finished. “Stand up for me and we’ll see which is which.” 

Kai had been nursing a new barrel aged whisky that Baron had proudly procured from the Republic of Charlotte, having fallen into the gentle muse of wond’rous wood. She blinked, unsure if she heard Lily correctly. 

“You want me to stand up?”

“Yes, straight as an arrow.”

Kai rose, trying to balance herself on the edge of the table, as the rest of the bar blurred. Lily jumped from her stool, stood on one foot and leaned forward, hand on her chin. 

“See here - your poncho -”

“Muulanwear” Kai corrected. “I’m not a mountaineer.” 

“Yes, sorry, Muulanwear.” Lily rolled her eyes. “Yes, and I know your people’s fascination with such things. You have interesting insignia, minimal, as I’ve said, yes, to better fit in with the others. Yet, you’ve chosen an interesting colour. Cerulean and crimson. Oh, I’m sure you’ve seen the trends, in fact, Lily and I were walking down by Hawthorne Road, and the adverts there all had Muulanwear cut like midriffs. So quirky! And I know that it isn’t some new corpo psyop, because literally everybody around the boardwalk had the same vogue. But you have a personality, that much is true. Though if there’s one thing that I could say about you, it’s that you’re entirely predictable. Ok first and foremost - I see that the insignia on your clothes is of the current dominant Aesthetic, Maternal Minimalism as it’s known here, and abroad, regretfully so. Even if I do approve of your Kinnokian made shoes, the dreadful art of global trade is not one way and now every lush in Quates dresses like, well, a prude. And that’s not to say you’re one either. Because you are predictable and let me say, forgive me lest I’ve fallen into drunkenness, but at the very least you could easily pull any lioness here in this bar if you waltzed in dressed like the Empress Herself adorned with the regalia of the cosmic mother. What do you find important in life? I think you struggle to figure that out, look here. You wear this brand, Aikeen. There’s no way you could afford a whole set, especially as a mercenary. But this isn’t bad - it took me years to get where I am. But you wear Aikeen like someone who hasn’t ever worn it before. I know you’re smart enough not to dress in brands for the sake of fitting in - but what other choice do you have? Live a little bit. Embrace the change that comes to you, like a fine wine. Or actually - and this is what I find most interesting about you. It’s the sensibility to dress like a little school-girl despite your, well I ought not disrespect you unintentionally and without consent and so on.”

Kai shifted the shawl so it hid her shoulder. Her eyes were wet. 

“Despite what?” she muttered, thankful that the darkness could shade her embarrassment but fearful that it didn’t matter and there was some way the others would notice. “Oh - you know me. I’m just trying to live day by day -” 

“To forget the memories of war? Well, sure enough and you do a good job of it by the way! You do have your own style and good for you for sticking by it! Who knows if the vogue of today’s youth would suit you.” 

“It’s despicable.” Kai spat. “I hate the trend - it’s distasteful. And the ecclesiastics all writ on their clothes like brand-names. It’s provocative. At least I have the decency to wear secular brands instead of blaspheming. You say I could pull anyone in this bar dressed like the Empress? But who am I to dress like Her?” 

“Provocative? Are you, or rather, were you not one of the many revolutionaries, change-bringers that helped usher in this culture - which you seem to be so disgusted by?”

“As if we had any say.” Kai sat back down.“The clothes we wore were the last things on our mind, nor did we concern ourselves with every instance of culture that would be bastardised lest we won.”

“Oh, but you did concern yourself with it. What else could have preoccupied your mind?” 

Kai’s eyes widened. 

“Staying alive.” she downed her drink. “But you know - I like you and I’ll give it a go. Sure, you’re right. I ought not to hide behind cheap brands. Who am I then? Purely a mercenary? Hand me your hair tie, whatever your name is. Your lover's hands have taken the role anyways.” 

And Lily handed her what she had asked for. 

Kai watched the clavicle of the other twitch as she knotted up the bottom of her Muulanwear to expose her stomach and tied the excess off. Her hands shivered as the fabric lifted, exposing to the brief bits of crimson light that hung around them, several small markings around her waist. 

“Charming. Well, that goes without saying.” Lauren declared. “Look at you and your muscles! And that knife! Well, I wouldn’t want to mess with you!”

As if anybody could. No, but to go back earlier when you were having a go at my profession.” Kai recollected, feeling that false sense of pride that often occurs after an evening drinking. “I’m a mercenary. And what exactly do you think that is? Wait - before you answer, and don’t give me that look with your half-baked eyes hanging low as if I were hard to see. I’ve done enough to make myself visible to you both and you’d have to really try to glimpse even more. What do you know of being a mercenary?” “A hired gun more or less.” said Lily, looking off to the side of Kai as if she were bored of her. 

“More or less. But let me tell you about what I go through every day.” Kai pushed her drink back as she was prone to talking with her hands and was conscious enough to remember of a previous incident when she had forgotten. “I have a habit of smoking and - well, actually first let me say I’m a member of the Guild. It’s a Mercenary Guild. Well, not exactly a member, not yet at least and I ought to really push on them for that. But yes, I have a vice for smoking and I was told by Priscilla, my mistress - don’t give me that look Baron, that’s the term they use, I don’t call her that. Anyways, Priscilla told me that the Orangii down by New Hyperlight - and you two would know very well the sort of people those Orangii are -”

“The sort of people to flee their homes because of a manmade environmental catastrophe, yes those sorts of people.” said Lauren not even bothering to look over at Kai, who grew a shade of red that was unable to be noticed. 

“Well, they have a particular - anyways, I won’t even go there. They have excellent food, I will say that -”

“You were saying?” Lauren added. 

“Well, I was getting there, Lauren, give me a minute.” “Well your stories take forever to get anywhere.”“Well are you in any rush?” Kai enunciated. 

Lily rolled her eyes in a way that made Kai pause to consider if the act was done maliciously or not. She sat on her stool, held the glass to her lips and exhaled as to softly laugh and feel the warmth of her own breath reflect back against the edges. The evening air had lessened its hellish grip and the softness that followed a well-needed thundershower fell into the bar and wisped past her flesh, now exposed. It was a reminder too cruel to be ignored.

“Nevermind me! Baron, that idiot girl. She knows what it’s like when I drink. Anyways, you were saying something about ATL?”

The girls were amusing themselves by peeping into their bags of clothes they had propped up in the spare stool next to them. Lily leaned over. 

“I’m sorry, what? You’re mumbling.” 

“Oh, I’m sorry! I always mumble.” Kai laughed, covering her mouth. She leaned in closer as if the former had invited her. Lauren walked over to them and stood between them. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” said Lauren. 

“Oh don’t give me that! What, you bait me to buy you drinks on the premise you’ll hook me up with it? That’s a funny joke.” Kai said, leaning further to grab Lauren’s hand. “Now, come on. I really need it.”

Baron returned to the bar and rolled her eyes. 

“Time to get you home, little lady. Before you embarrass yourself.”

“No, I’ll manage. Go off and do whatever it is you usually do.” said Kai, shooeing her off with her hand. 

“Kai, you need to go home. By god, I will pay Katie to bring you.” “Didn’t she go home? Wasn’t that your whole plan earlier? Let me recollect.” Kai said, leaning into the bar. “First, you wanted me to kill your clientele so I would have inspiration. Well, I’m not that far gone, no matter how much you think I am. Who are you, my mother?” 

Kai stood up as she raised her voice. Baron held her hand up like one does to a starving bear, knowing full well the futility of the situation. 

“Are you my caretaker? Am I that feeble that I must be coddled and watched over like I’m to go and jump a bridge at a moment’s notice. You wanted me to kill your clientele, and listen I know you were joking, but the point is that you offer the worst sorts of advice. You don’t know how much it hurts to be unable to explain my problems to you. As if keeping occupied and being a good little girl and doing my part in society, or at the very least, living in those small moments of motion - as if killing your annoying customers would grant me that feeling, that gnawing, loving, yearnful and absolutely insanely difficult to describe, impossible feeling of Her Comforting Light! How I envy you, to stand there with no problems to face in the world but scheduling concerns and the occasionally annoying customer. How I envy the simple life!”

“And if that were true, Kai.” Baron yelled. “If that were true, that you envied the simple life, then by God, join me and work here with me behind the bar. You have no concern for work. You loathe it. You have no idea how difficult it is to maintain composure - composure that was nicely maintained until you decide to fuck it all up! I could have lost it to some drunken lush who decided not to pay, but instead I have to yell at you! You’re ungrateful!”

Kai reached over and threw an empty glass over at Baron. The bar was a blur.

Note: At this time, I was unsure if I wanted them to leave peacefully or have a fight lead Kai down a path of drunken destruction. So the next part is disconnected from the bit above. Consider it an alternate history.

They left the Fortuna Electric without another word and fell into the growing mist outside. Lily said that the rental was only a few minutes away, parallel to the infamous Rosenthaal Avenue, so they led the way while Khyy followed them from behind. And in the light of the urban expanse, her skin was a beacon that guided them. The wetness clung onto the palms, a congregation of pallbearers - their tears, in the wind, blew down and onto the girls as they pressed onwards. 

Kai had understood that she had a problem. And so, she often would at that moment when such an epiphany would come across her, acknowledge it for the smallest amount of time for her to declare internally that she had done such a thing and push it back down, deep inside her head. And it was this pseudo-acknowledgement that prevented her from thinking she had to deal with the recurring issues regarding her intense fear of abandonment. Everytime an event would occur when she had to deal with the stresses that often occur in regards to the departure of loved ones, even small things like whenever Baron had to leave for work after they had spent the morning indulging in bruncheon, because of her own declaration that she acknowledged that, indeed, she had an issue that needed resolving, though not immediately (Kai would often scour pop-psych journalettes in the feigned attempt at understanding her own condition, where the very mention of comfort - that the problem was not entirely her own fault, and that society as a whole was largely to blame, gave her the necessary reassurances that a soft pat on the head gives a dog). 

And so Kai often fell into those familiar trappings of affection, leading Baron to believe that such repetitions of longing were the result of insanity, instead of true intimacy. One day before Baron had to go to work, the two had spent the afternoon in shared company at the Cafe Sharon - where the threat of bottomless mimosas and avocado toast allured even the most pig-headed and homespun to its white-washed farm-to-table decor. And to say that Kai was unworthy of interest from others would be incorrect. She had the proper vogue - and in the sunroom where they sat, the sun blew into her eyes and a smile replied warmer than it could dream of being. Yet, it was a rare thing to occur, and it often had to come about naturally, which is why Kai found herself in the company of her roommate, despite living together for some time now, more often than not. A knot, like the ones tied all around the kitschy burlap ropes that hung about the rafters of the resto, mocking the sensibilities of the seafaring, had formed in both of their hearts for each other. And as they dined, the topics of all the rumours of Baron’s colleagues would come about - who was sleeping with who, why Marie cheated on Katie, why Karen thought it would be a good idea to sneak her underwear in Ellie’s bag when she left for a month to go backpacking over in the Orient. Kai smiled warmly when the latter discussion had come up, for she knew that Karen was similar to Kai in many ways; and so Kai made a mental note of what Baron had told her, in the even that if she were to ever come across her ex again, that maybe this is all she had to do to win her over. 

And when the afternoon started to wane in the presence of dusk, Baron, with a face hot and red from their alcoholic adventure, declared that she had to go and do the thing that gave them the luxury to drink in the company of other girls, who were wealthier and prettier than they could ever hope to be. Kai’s mind began to warp and her drink began to sour. The mimosa’s were not bottomless - the poor waitress girl had informed them that they had drunk the lot and they had a good laugh about it earlier - and so they had each gotten some raspberry IPA that was sessionable and sweet, without a hint of tartness that Baron would have commented on - as it was her job that made her assiduous in regards to the complexities of alcohol. Perhaps, Kai thought, that if she were to sweeten Baron’s drink, then she’d stay longer! Yes, for it was the tartness of her ale that made her want to leave. So, Kai had asked her if perhaps the batch was bad, and maybe the sediment of the wild yeasts  had sunk to the bottom of the keg, where the waitress had perhaps poured from. Baron shook her head, her canary hair strewn atop her head like a cat in a thunderstorm. “No, see here? You’ve only drunk half of yours, and you can see that the sediment has dispersed all about the thing. And no, maybe it’s time we go anyway, for you’re getting far too drunk to notice, but you’ve sipped from it consistently, so the sediment hasn't had time to settle back down.” 

And Kai’s heart started to ache and her slender hands began to shake, though not manic enough for others to notice, but enough to make Kai feel it dangerous to hold onto her glass for too long. She smiled, though the sun had gone and hidden behind the horizon, and the night was growing, so Baron could not feel its warmth. The comedian waitress had come round again, to ask if they wanted anything else - Kai, for a second, and the twitching of her phoney smile had shown this to Baron, who in her shade, had not noticed, knew of her own inner problem. And so, she let Baron talk for her, go on her rant about the hell that was her work, a hell that she so loved dearly, pay and depart the restaurant, leaving Kai to finish her ale if she so pleased. And when Kai raised her glass to comment on its craftsmanship, the waitress had already departed, disappearing into the frenzy of other patrons, who were all wealthier, prettier and more well-adjusted than her. 

And who had the luxury of tipping more. 

But they soon came across a small townhouse nudged between the others, in a row, and above the aforementioned cafe that Lily had been going on about prior to their arrival. Once they were inside, Kai took note of each and every exit in the off chance that they were to soon become volunteer organ donors. Baron landed on a couch in the living room.