Where the Sun doesn't Shine (Jag)

The night air was cool and it lapped against Jag’s blushed cheeks from the open glass door on his right. His hand held an emptying beer bottle between his index fingers and the knuckles of the other four. He held it up to his lips and tilted the bottom of the bottle upwards. The beer was warm and starting to flatten, but it still carried citrus tang. His free arm was loosely draped over the couch’s arm like he was holding hands with the evening’s friend. An acoustic guitar rested beside him. A warm hum enveloped him from the corner record player as the wax slowly swirled around its axis.

The Aquavian capacity for advancement was amazing, but audio technology had never improved past the consistent crackling of a needle winding its way around a record.

The side-walls were glass and the left looked down upon the depths of his oceans. He could see, far off in the distance, Shinsoo as a small, luminescent spark that stood in stark contrast to the lightless lengths hugging the ocean floor. The right wall looked out upon the tropics. The moon sat high and heavy in the sky. The same breeze that brushed him gently and rhythmically pushed palm leaves. The front, back, ceiling and floor were walls proper. They were old limestone slabs that unevenly distributed grays and whites and smooths and roughs. They were covered with posters and papers ranging from a newer blues and beats fusion band to lysine’s role in enzyme cold adaptation. They didn’t have to be stone walls, and with a blink of his inherited heterochromatic eyes they could become glass walls like the sides. Only Shinsoo’s bustling and the tropics beckoning relaxation mattered to him now, and so that was where he focused. His was a compartment in space that floated where it pleased him to float, slipping through space like water slipping through cracks. Its dimensions and locations were purely arbitrary, and each wall and floor and ceiling could exist wherever his domain could reach.

It was as he finished his drink that he felt Tamesis. He found it funny that she was being so conspicuous. Oh babe, you must really want something if you’re going to drag yourself all the way down here for some quality time. His previous interactions with her had been second-hand—Who even goes to deity meetings, anyway?—but he at least knew the qualities of her country: under-handed and overly ambitious. Zhadrahni were consumed with crawling overtop one another to ever achieve anything of worth—like male crabs scrambling to escape a pot of boiling water. They were effectively scavengers—great customers—but scavengers nonetheless. The best Zhadrahni scientists were still a few generations removed from Aquavia, and their closest semblances to art were gang graffiti and blood-spatters. They were too consumed with chasing ephemeral power to actually do anything. 

It was not his concern and not his country, but she was his guest. He supposed he should afford her the courtesy of introductions before he rushed to judgment.

A hole melted in the limestone behind Jag and he threw his bottle into it before the hole closed itself. It would be reduced into grains of sand and spit back into the ocean. His jacket hung loosely over his shoulders and his arms swung free of their sleeves. He sighed. The work didn’t stop even when it was over.

Jag looked up at the ceiling and the limestone slab that comprised it evanesced into the deep ocean in front of Tamesis. She was easy to find in his domain. The same glass that composed his walls now comprised the ceiling and it had an open door. Regardless of pressure and gravity the water held its place at the threshold. Tamesis could hold a normal sense of gravity until she reached what Jag had deemed the floor, until then the room would seem sideways. She’s a big girl, she’ll adjust. He thought the room bare and decided a counter and a pair of barstools would fill it nicely. Water crept up through the floor and he molded it with his sight before it hardened and then metamorphosed into a granite countertop island, cushioned bar stools, and a full ice bucket. He would see what the goddess would drink when she got here. Jag sat down with his back to her entrance and looked out upon the tropics. “So babe, what do I owe the pleasure?” he said as she flowed through the doorway.

He turned around to greet her after her condolence. “It’s alright, I was always the handsome one anyway.” Jag did nothing to He looked at the bottle intrigued. She was an exotic goddess, so certainly she would have exotic tastes. Jag himself had become accustomed to his people’s creations: rums and fruit-tinged beers, mostly, but Jag was never someone to turn down a drink. “I’d rather have your booze to your empathy, if we’re getting to know each other.” If the drink tasted half as well as the bottle looked, then Tamesis and Jag were going to get along just fine. He grabbed the bottle from Tamesis and allowed his hands to glide over the glass as he stared into the liquid before he decided that he had enough foreplay. He moved one hand to the cork and simultaneously water materialized and metamorphosed into a corkscrew, and he dug the metal screw into the cork and moved it around and opened the bottle. He smelled citrus and he smelled the burn but he smelled something passionate that bubbled from inside the bottle.

“I suppose we should, babe. Don’t take this personally, I never expected a goddess of shadows to carve out time to make a new BFF. And I hope you don’t mind—“ Jag kissed the mouth of the bottle and took a swig of it. His cool eyes opened up as the taste washed over his tongue. The taste was ethereal. He supposed that maybe his palette had stunted after consuming so many mortal alcohols. He had always kept mortal pleasures—they were relaxing and fun and adrenaline-inducing. He had always held Mass in Dionysian temples of laser shows and electronic beats and mortals had offered sacrifice: booze, grass, pills, and their bodies. He gained a taste for it, most likely connecting the praise and the pleasures as mutually inclusive. But this was different. It tasted wholly divine.

“But hot damn, I’m buying whatever you’re selling as long as it comes with this,” he said as he wiped his mouth and passed the bottle back to Tamesis, gradually tilting the mouth toward her own. He smiled a bit and the liquid felt good as it crept down his throat.  The drink was smooth and did not burn as much as he thought it would, originally.  He was a little disappointed; Jag liked the burn.  But the drink itself was wholly spectacular from start to finish.  Not all pleasure could be perfect, he supposed.

Jag had never really thought about a bottle’s craftsmanship until he had hedonistically thrown one against a wall or a sidewalk. He watched her swirling the bottle. It was some kind of chemistry that had eluded him. She added and mixed with purpose and the reagents themselves, for as delicious as they tasted, still were mysterious to Jag. But he was never afraid of the unknown. Dym had always been afraid of what he couldn’t predict, and maybe Jag had inherited some of that when he gained full custody of Aquavia, but he still clung to his predispositions to keep him sane. His people needed it to stay sane as well. Everyone needed to let loose if they were going to remain happy, productive workers and keep pressing the country forward.

Jag took the new liquid to his lips slowly and curiously. The mist was like the head of good beer and it seemed to smell with exotic amalgam aromas. When the liquid finally retreated into his mouth and down his throat Jag let out a satisfied ah in order to quell the burn. It felt like a wound being disinfected and Jag thought it felt good. He was never for moderation but this drink required it. Jag took one more greedy sip before he passed the bottle back to Tamesis. “And what moment was this?” he asked Tamesis. He took his thumb across his mouth and wiped up any droplets that had managed to escape his throat.

“That would be a good idea, I think. I wonder though, with so much effort put into bottling moments for later, do you enjoy them as they happen? Ephemeral moments preserved make for great booze, apparently, but it strikes me like people taking pictures. They snap away at a firework or the launch of a new ship or during a tsunami but they lose the moment in preserving it. But hey, babe, that’s just one god’s opinion talking. I’m not about to knock this stuff,” Jag said as he shrugged and pointed one finger lazily at the bottle while his arm rested on the counter top.

“And we enjoy our divinity enough. We all find pleasure and accomplishment in our people’s development. They’re orphans, you know. We made them orphans—this is true—but they still need a guiding force to take care of them.”
 They had worshiped some false gods, born of corrupting currency, who had taken power in a city and Brynne smote them with a single stroke. He used to worry about unfettered advancement and whether or not his people would lose humanity in the name of progress, but Aquavian progress was the only thing anymore.

He smirked back at Tamesis before he motioned for the bottle back. “But you are right in one regard. They finish way too quickly.”

Jag felt warmth creep into his chest and smooth skin slide across his own and he tasted warm salt and he could feel his arms and legs and hips growing weaker. Reverence replaced it, and he felt dumbstruck and his eyes stared out at an unknown totem, like two vacant windows. Then those feelings were blown away with the soft, whirling chant of a calming breeze and he felt his hair brush along his face but the red threads had never moved. Finally that was pushed away too and all he could feel was the cold and empty vacuum until everything exploded in a fury of fragments and heat, and he could feel the sharp smokescreen of the moon dust and he crashed back into reality as if he had been the crashing comet.

True to form, Jag placed the puddle of alcohol to his mouth and shot it back. It was still intense but the initial rush of mystery had worn off, and he was suited to handle it. His eyes and ears perked up at Tamesis’s whisper. “Hmm? How did you orphan them then, babe?” He did not know that Tamesis had ever been here before. As far as he was concerned, she was just a lonely god from some other place. He hadn’t put too much thought into it. It wasn’t his country, it wasn’t his responsibility.

“I suppose that’s the difference between us and people. Maybe they're just wandering around the desert and worshiping their own thirst, but they find some meaning in it. The ultimate finality of their own mortality drives them to succeed. It drives them to achieve. Humans do not find immortality literally. They find it in their work and their legacy and in their progeny. They are happy in their state because they don’t know the luxury of eternity. Removed from our disciples you and I would probably just keep drinking and fucking away the days because time isn’t a finite resource to us. The world would stagnate. People keep driving everything into new equilibria—for better or for worse— and that keeps it from rusting away. We fill a niche, Tamesis, much like they do. I doubt a shark would find much meaning in being a turtle.” He took a hearty, pregnant pause. The record player had changed its record during their exchange. Shy chords came through the speakers and a man’s voice, quiet and high-pitched, carried itself along with the instrumental.

I thought I saw you in the sea
Your face and foam stared back at me.
So as I drift among the waves,
Oh babe, do I count the days
Until I drift on back to you.

“The lack of time has an appeal of its own, to those who’ll buy it. Maybe I’m ignorant or maybe I’m just a really shitty philosopher when I’m rocking a buzz, but it is what it is.”

He took up the chalice and it felt cold against his fingers. He poured the new liquid into it and it flowed slowly and viscously like syrup. “And what Victor’s moment is this?  I assume Zhadrah is full of fleeting feelings of victory,” he said as he stared into the cup for a moment. Jag placed the vessel to his lips and was about to tilt the cup back before he placed it down. “I think we’ve drank too much without toasting, Tamesis. You’re the guest here, I’ll even let you pick something, hon.” Jag raised his chalice up toward Tamesis.