The Cries of a Brother and a Speaker [Jag]

Jag strummed a few notes on his guitar. Each sounded hollow. He knew the scales. He knew the chords. More importantly he could usually feel them. But the notes had no meaning today. He couldn’t find any note to harmonize, until he had an epiphany. He knew the next note. The only one that could harmonize with the feelings that were festering inside. Jag took the guitar by the neck, strangling it, and introduced it to the wall. The two met with a cacophony of crashes and disharmony and Jag continued the conversation until all that was left connecting the neck to the body was the thin jugular of the high E that could snap at any moment. He threw down the guitar in disgust, hearing a death rattle of random vibrations and feedback from the amplifier. Was that how Dym died? Angry and out of tune?

Jag walked over to a mirror and stared. His brother’s eyes stared back like inglorious epithets to the recently deceased. As a consequence of Dym’s death he had begun absorbing his powers and his responsibilities and it had been taxing. Music and booze could only distract it all for so long—eventually he would have to take up his brother’s mantle. Dammit Dym, couldn’t you have taken your responsibilities with you? He punctuated each thought with a swig from some rum he had hidden away for a rainy day. There were fallen soldiers scattered around the floor.

He had felt the gentle tug to some unknown forward for a week now. It brought with it a sinking feeling. Empathetic but alien. It was only now did it demand an answer. Was this Aquavia that he felt in his chest, stagnant and broken? If it was, it was among friends there in that intraperitoneal prison. But he could feel something in the mourning of his nation. A voice that seemed to yell louder than the rest of the crying masses. Jag closed his eyes. It was easier to concentrate on finding the voice than it was to remain in reality, trying desperately to leave. It was coming into focus through the dissonance and Jag finally recognized the screams. It was Neviah. Dym had left a vacuum for more than just him—they had been close, if he remembered. Yeah, they had been. It was selfish of him to be moping around in solitary confinement. He had always had a sandpaper and skin relationship with Neviah (Jag always maintained he was the skin in this metaphor). She was uptight and never seemed to appreciate the finer pieces of mortal life. Five by five. But Dym saw enough in her to make her a speaker and now they both sat in the void he had left behind. Wasn’t his brother’s approval enough?

Jag’s surroundings began melting (impaired teleportation was always interesting) as he began following her cry, revealing a scene that he had been feeling. Neviah’s abode was destroyed by her own grief and he couldn’t blame her. His guitar was testament to that. It was good that his tear ducts were empty—Jag knew that this nation of wild waves and deep trenches needed an island to weather the storm somewhere above the water. He would have to be that haven. First for Neviah, then for Aquavia. He would have to keep himself going in the meantime. He looked down at the half empty bottle of rum—could this combust? No, it would have to be stronger. He couldn’t run an engine on this but he supposed it would help him.

“Neviah…” he sighed from beyond the doorway, looking in. His eyes heavy. His heart saddled by a repressed depression. Another swig to prepare himself. No two and it was long. Jag gathered himself and knocked on the frame with the knuckle of his forefinger. “I guess asking you how you’re doing would be a pretty stupid question, huh?” He cracked a smile into his hardened face. Jag swayed to a nonexistent rhythm before leaning against the frame for support. He shook his bottle by the neck like a baby with a rattle. “If there was a time for a drink, baby, it’d be now.” He rose up the capless invitation and leaned the top toward her.

“Well that’s not going to solve anything,” he quipped dryly. A shattered invitation from a shattered woman. Jag walked into her bedroom slowly counting each step as if the numbers would give him balance. One. Two three four. Five. A drunken staccato. He looked up from his feet to Neviah—this grieving process was taking its toll on her.

“I’m here because I had to check on my one and only speaker!” he boomed punctuating his sentence with a small hiccup. Neviah had never enjoyed his company, especially when he was drunk, but Jag shrugged it off. “Bottles,” he retorted, shaking his rattle at her like a wagging finger. “I can’t imagine Dym would think much less of me. In fact, I can’t imagine Dym is thinking too much about anything right now.” Ah, dammit. He probably crossed a line there. No, screw it. It was his brother. He had a right to cathartic humor even if it killed him (probably via Neviah). “More importantly, how would Dym think of you? Sitting here, moping around while our country lay paralyzed in mourning?”

He ignored her demand to leave and took it as an invitation to take another swig and walk closer to the bed. Finding it with his free hand, Jag sat down on Neviah’s bed and proceeded to lean back slowly and exhaling deeply. He leaned his bottle against his thigh. A leaning tower that promised its proselytes a more bearable today. He stretched his legs in the air before letting them drop to the ground again. “I can’t imagine Dym would think very highly of either of us right now,” he said lowly with church-like reverence. He could feel his sadness changing to anger and back into grief turning and shifting down there in his stomach like wild waves and he knew it was all Dym’s fault and here he was just trying to keep it all together and he just needed something to hold back the oncoming flood. So he took two drinks. One to dam the tide. Another to damn Dym. Some of the second drink began to dribble out of his mouth. His mouth rejected its pretenses. He wiped it away with his bare arm and then stretched both out, exposing the bare middle of his chest to the world. One hand nailed to the bed with his bottle. The other nailed to Neviah as he slowly reached for the middle of her back. That’s how normal people console each other, right? They did it through contact? Through empathy? Understanding? His eyes stared up toward the ceiling with an austere prayer for rain. Rain would be nice. Not that hard rain they had in the winter—a soft summer one.

Jag shrugged on the bed, “Like lap bitch? I don’t regret that.” He took his drink from Neviah (he would never refuse free, high-quality booze). He didn’t sip just yet. “Because of exactly this.” He sat up now pensively holding his drink as evidence before looking at Neviah, “I don’t need you to please me, Neviah. In case you forgot, pleasure is my field of expertise. I don’t need you. Dym needed you. He needed a lap bitch. Aquavia needs you. Because Aquavia needs her speaker.” He took a sip. Hot damn that was good scotch. “The way I figure it, I speak pretty well on my own. I need someone to speak for Aquavia to me, not the other way around. I can give them what they want; I need you to tell me what they need.”

He lay back down on the bed with the glass on his chest his eyes closed for a moment. It was going to be difficult to not run Aquavia into the ground. Jag knew he was going to have to make adjustments and none of them seemed too particularly pleasing to him—working? Building? Sure, if that’s how you got your kicks then who was Jag to judge? But it was too stressful for him. In fact, this whole damn thing was too stressful for him. Better to just take another sip instead. He raised his glass up to Neviah, “Here’s to Dym. That dick.” Jag drank long from his glass until it was empty and the only memory he had of the drink was the burp that followed. Aw shit. He was pretty drunk. He could feel the drinks from earlier set into him like a cathartic cold.

“I just need you to keep being what you were doing,” Jag said as if he were speaking to someone behind Neviah. His eyes closed slowly and he felt himself beginning to drift off into sleep. He blinked himself awake and looked around again as if he could tell time by the setup of the room. Jag noticed the box Neviah held. A ring? Were they going to hitch up? He laughed inside. Dym getting married—a one woman man. He couldn’t help but feel that would end in tears—well, probably not as many as there were now obviously, but tears just the same. Only one way to know for sure. Jag raised his free hand as if it were weighted down by the poltergeist of his sober self and pointed to her box. “What’s in it?”

Sore spot. Oh well, it would have been brought up eventually. “Yeah, that was before I knew you.” Jag slurred his words through a sarcastic grin. Little fingers to plug the dam. He looked at her again. Swaying her hips and bending over—was it the booze? Or was it just Neviah? Jag knew that usually this would entice him, but not now and he didn’t know the reason why. An engine with the choke on. Either that or rum and scotch weren’t the best ways to fuel himself. Those days were long gone. He scoffed a bit and listened to her sing instead of dwelling too long on the subject. They were going to get along great if she took up to calling herself his lap-bitch. And with some humor!

Jag got up from the bed after Neviah had entered the bathroom. He probably shouldn’t have had anymore to drink. It would sour what was otherwise a pretty sour day. He stumbled around the room toward the nightstand and opened the box. He held his breath doing so—as if a ghost of his brother was going to jump out at him. But nothing popped out. Only a pair of earrings. He wanted to smash them. Ground them into fine dust and then scatter it on the breeze. He wanted to do that to everything Dym had touched. These earrings. Neviah. Aquavia. If it helped him to forget he would have drowned the entire continent. No, don’t do that. Can’t do that. Don’t forget about Dym. Embrace the time together—wasn’t that the endpoint? What if he never wanted to get there? Jag wanted to stew here, in this room, with his bottle of cheap rum. Not this stuff that tasted good on the way down. Jag wanted the burn. His eyes started hurting as if Dym was scolding him from beyond the grave. He scoffed at that—he had no gods, no masters. Not anymore.

He closed the box and dropped it back on the night stand. It landed on its side. He stumbled into the kitchen moving side to side as if weaving between invisible posts. He reached for his bottle and put it to his lips. He kicked up the bottle and back his head and it would have went well had he been sober but he was long past that point. Too much momentum and not enough balance sent him slowly falling backwards like a tree that had been rotting at the base and he tumbled to the ground. In his fall there was a loud thud of body on stone but at least one of Jag’s abilities was still in full effect while inebriated—he’d be damned if he was going to spill his drink. What would Orik or Brynne or Tamesis think of him if they saw him now? Whatever. Fuck them. They didn’t have to see his brother’s body and head as separate objects.

“You alright in there?” Jag yelled. His sentence was stressed sporadically and he spoke in cursive but he didn’t care. He didn’t want to be alone with his thoughts right now. Fix Neviah first. Then fix Aquavia. He seemed to be making good progress on the first front, and that (and his rum) kept him motivated.