They call it sliding because that's what you do, you slide, but not quick like a water park ride that shoots you down and spits you out into chlorinated pools. No, this kind of slide is more lazy river slow, slow the way you'd like to imagine it was back when you were born, when you drifted down the birth canal except here there's no violent noise, no glaring lights in your face and doctors smacking and probing you for signs of life when you hit the other side. Here on yola all you have to do is slide deeper into a dark pool of you. You're the whole world. There's nothing but space and you but you're warm, so warm, it feels like you're wrapped up and cocooned in violet-velvet petals, the black-purple leaves with their wide veins wafting sweetly below you. Maybe they're singing a song without sound to you. It's a little different for everyone. I heard bells the first time. Heard's not the right way to describe it. I was inside the bells, every one of them, tiny as they were. I rolled endlessly around inside. They were spherical bells, suzu bells, and the metal felt as cool and refreshing as the word's meant to sound tripping off your tongue. There is nothing and everything. You drop further and further away from the space where your eyelids have closed. Maybe your eyes aren't closed at all but it feels that way. I knew a guy; one time when he was sliding he made the mistake of leaving his fifth story apartment window open. He made the mistake of sliding and being human. Humans aren't meant to fall out of apartment buildings and live to tell the tale. But, that's the price you pay for a few hours of perfect harmony. That's a lie, really, there's nothing all that perfect about it. Not after the first time. You can never slide so far, so swiftly at a soothing pace, ever again. You'll try and you'll fail. But you won't stop trying until you're dead. And you'll be sad when you're dead because you imagined dying would be like that first time you tipped the needle against your skin. The sickest part, in my opinion for what little it's worth, is that you will do all these things being fully aware that staying on this path will always drop you off a cliff. You'll do it regardless because something that's happened along this way we call living has pushed you on a quest even more obsessive than sliding. To feel numb, to escape and to dive away from everything and everyone in the world that's ever hurt you. It's next to impossible to ignore that need. But Gigi, you say, how can you know these things and live to tell the tale (unlike that poor bastard who learned too late to close his apartment window first)" It's got nothing to do with morals or seeing whatever light you believe in. I stopped because I'm greedy. You can't make money if you're using all your product. Quitting was just good old fashioned business sense. My father would be proud. That doesn't mean I don't think about it every day. It's like having an itch in that space between your shoulder blades, halfway down your spine, and no backscratcher in sight. I spend so many minutes of my life actively deciding not to grab every last thick ounce of that black pudding in my greenhouse and shoot it into the first vein I can find. If it weren't for greed and vengeance I'd be slumped over a toilet somewhere, bloated and dead. How d'ya like them deadly sins now" So Gigi, you respond, how can you sell something you know is so awful to people's sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, uncles, aunts, cousins, husbands, wives, mistresses, third cousins twice removed and so on down the ties that bind" You've seen junkies willing to mug their own grandmothers for enough cash to buy them one more ounce. How do you sleep at night when you're peddling death one injection at a time" I can sleep because I know it's not such a cut and dry issue. Sorry if it sounds clich' but it's entirely gray. I won't condemn someone who wants to disappear. It's their choice, their right. If I stopped selling it they'd get it from someone else. Maybe they'd get it from someone more willing to screw with the quality and dilute it to make more money with greater quantity. It doesn't matter. You can't condemn them without knowing what it feels like to burn for something so badly, whatever that something is. Maybe it's not right but the only person who'll ever be able to convince me to stop is me. And I'm a stubborn bitch.

Blood's an awesome thing. When I say "awesome," I mean the more biblical definition. I mean awesome the way you talk about a God who inspires wonder, awe and terror all within the same acceptance of his existence"neither good nor bad but everything in between.

In its vital nature blood conjures up all sorts of beliefs and significance. It's the kind of magic you don't want to f**k with if you know what?s good for you. Even vampires who don't bleed themselves can't function in a world without it.

I understand why we put so much stock in blood but more often than not it drives me up the motherf**king wall. The man who pumped his blood into my veins is the person I despise the most in this universe while a man like Kado, who shares not a single drop with me, will always feel like my father even when we're so many miles apart. But even I can't fully sever those blood ties no matter how much I want to, and believe me, I've tried.

"Fully," for those keeping track, is the key adverb in that sentence.

I miss Kado so much despite the fact that I saw him a few weeks ago before I left Jenli. Holy sh*t was that last trip a disaster. Not the seeing Kado at his monastery part but the rest of it. Kentaro. Talk about f**king blood on my hands.

S**t, where was I" Kado. He'd tease me about how disjointed my thoughts are these days. And for being so angry, which really should be the last two ways to respond to either of those conditions but that's Kado. "Kagami, if you fill up with any more steam you will blow worse than a yak with bad gas." I would laugh too despite myself. It's hard not to feel more relaxed around Kado. The man's a Jenlian Quaalude.

Kagami. It means mirror. It's what Kado calls me, although sometimes he reminds me I'm more of a broken mirror. He says part of what unnerves so many people who circle around me is that I force them to see themselves. I'm some monstrous mix of fun-house and talking mirror. "The tongue, like a sharp knife, kills without drawing blood, Kagami." People are wrong to think I'm dangerous if I carry around my switchblade or my knuckles. The danger isn't that I'll stick you, it's that I'll see you, and in seeing comes saying and then you'll see the same.

Kado is definitely on my mind, the monk has my inner monologue thinking in f**king tongue-twisters for Christ's sake.

But the more I think about what went down with Ollie, the more I'm reminded about mirrors. It's no secret I can be cruel, there's a certain compassionate light that flickered out the day Teddy died, but I think I've always been a mirror. It's more obvious now because I don't bother to round out my words, temper them for the situation, honesty with empathy, but even before my brother died I could get under people's skin. My family took it better back then because, and it's so hard to remember this part of me now, but I could be sweet once upon a time too. That sounds ridiculous doesn't it' But I think it's true. Who knows though, maybe one pill too many will make you remember things that never were.

I've gotten over the need to justify my actions to people. That happens when everyone's ready to stick you in the box they've got labeled for you to tuck you away in the attic. Every family needs a villain. You get used to it. But what happened with Ollie is that he looked in the mirror. He was condescending to Cally and throttling Correy on the bar. So sue me, I enjoyed forcing him to stay and confront it instead of letting him leave and cool off. Maybe he would have apologized later but that's not the point.

It's easy to deny your ugly parts but we all have them. It's the people who lie to themselves and make excuses that need to see. This isn't about me being proud of throwing down with my cousin. I hate that I probably hurt Lola, Jon and Cor with that scene. I know family's a big deal to them. But you can't know yourself without knowing all the parts of yourself, both good and bad, the entire awesome spectacle that is you.

My ugly part is that I liked seeing Ollie snap. It made me feel powerful. I pushed him as hard as I could and he broke. He swung at me like Junior used to hit him. He said it, not me.

The part that no one will ever understand is that for the first time in as long as I can remember I felt closer to Ollie. I caught a glimpse of who he was and what brought him to this time and place as he is. I felt like maybe one day I could actually know him as something other than a link in my life I would have never chosen for myself.

((Warning: Some graphic imagery included.))

There was something restless under the grower's normally stoic exterior tonight when she reached the Inn's porch where Bjorn and Anya stood. Gigi started for the door but pulled back with an odd hesitation and dug out a joint from her pocket instead. She was itching for something worse so she gave her hands something else to do by lighting it with a frown and a lean against the porch rail.

Bjorn parted his lips briefly, attempting to scent it out - probably in order to see if he was going to bother her to share whatever it was. "Haven't seen your face around here in ages," he told her, pulling out one of those indecipherable, imported 'cloves' that smelled like unknown spice intermingled with a few more familiar scents, subtle, but heady, slivered up in slow-burning leaves, finger-sculpted. Putting one in his mouth muffled his next question, and although he spoke to Gigi, he had not forgotten Anya was there, watched her here and there from the corners of his eyes while he tugged a match out of the other end of the case where a floppy book had been pinned, half out. "Your pretty face fall off the edge of the earth, or what? Gigi, that's Anya." Chin-nod. "Anya, Gigi."

It was then that Geist strolled loose from the alley, although he'd been maintaining an even stroll for far longer than he'd care to show, from sheer restless energy. The scent from the porch brought a slow, sentimental smile and a sidelong glance to the grower, with little more than a stoic nod before sliding through the door.

"I know how to stay off the radar when I need to. Most people prefer it and don't ask." She inhaled the joint and blew the smoke out the side of her mouth with a nod at Geist's passing. Perhaps a future customer one day when she had business on the forefront of her brain. "We've met." This about Anya. "And you know pretty is a f**king overstatement." But for her dry tone she held up the joint to him as an offering if he wanted it.

Anya respectfully nodded to both of them. "Thank you. We have met once before." Name confirmed. The piece of paper Camilla left for her at the bakery immensely bothered her. Fingers drawn from the rail and pushed inside her pockets. "It was nice seeing both of you again. I wish you safe travels." Hood drawn up to hide her hair. Descending the stairs and setting a path to the bakery.

If it was marijuana, Bjorn accepted it and put his own crap away. Hell, why not. It'd been awhile, and he wasn't a regular, but it wasn't as if it was crack or something. Had a good pair of lungs, that man, and he held it in for a long time, added another shorter draw to fill his lungs up all the way, and passed it back. Stayed close, like she might keep sharing it, but not so close that they touched. For some reason, Bjorn frowned after Anya, briefly watching the street - but as smoke started slowly slivering out of his mouth, he'd keep talking, "Or an understatement, but it don't offend me none if you can't take a compliment," easily, like it was a B-thang. He'd been in mostly a damn good mood all day, somehow. "By most people, you must mean the womenfolk. They're a wily lot. What you been into?"

It was that homegrown green and Gigi took the joint back for another hit when he relinquished it. She ran her hand through her hair and frowned at his question. "Too much these last few days. Seen something I can't shake and I've seen a lot of f**ked up sh*t. So I'm here for milder distractions." Distractions from the replayed image, distractions from dipping into her own yola supply. The need for distraction made her more honest than usual.

"I find disappearing into a bottle of whiskey helps with that," and Bjorn wasn't endorsing whiskey so much as he was endorsing the unhealthy habit of disappearing into one's favored habit until the bad feelings started to fade out. No accent, though, or if there was, it had nothing to do with Europe. "Or doing some #$%^&* you ain't proud of so you have something else to think about." Honesty begets honesty, seems like, and his index finger, his thumb, invited another pass. "You want to talk about it?"

Gigi passed the joint back to him and rolled her neck. "I've seen a lot of f**ked up things but I can't shake what I saw yesterday. I don't know that you want to imagine it too if I describe it."

"Girl, word on the street is people're carving my face into dead bodies and I saw a friend of mine scrape her fingers down to the bone painting on a concrete wall off the harbour topless before a shadow-whatever busted her face open," he told her before he took another hit, deep, long, held it in and spoke in the way smokers did when they weren't ready to release their lungs yet. "I doubt you'll surprise, shoot." Bjorn'd had enough of his own crazy, and seemed more than open to hearing about someone else's.

"That's an odd way to pay tribute." She meant about the carving his face into bodies with a twitch of her nose. She ran her fingers through her hair again and worked on telling the story while leaving out the details of her business that might get her in trouble to share. "I went to see this chick....about something she owed me. She works in a brothel, a cheap sh*tty one at that. I....busted in unannounced while she was with a customer letting him do something to her that was f**king disgusting, but not the part that bothers me." Here now she reached for what little was left of the joint to kill it before she could continue.

He didn't Snoop Dogg it because, chances were, she needed it a whole lot more than he did " he yielded it, his thumb pressing it to her index finger while his moved out of the way, sliding off slow so her thumb could come in. He might not have been a 'regular', but he'd had enough experience in this arena to seem proficient. "What's the part that bothered you?" Patient, easy.

"I expected she might be working. And the screaming and the surprise at seeing me." She took it in a seamless exchange and sucked down what she could before stamping it out. "I saw this shoebox pressed up in the corner of the room. I thought what she had of mine would be in there so I ripped it open." Her caramel skin came as close as it could to blanching. She almost looked like it might be her turn to dry heave on the porch before she swallowed the thick lump in her throat.

That had him undeniably curious about the disgusting kink she'd had the misfortune to witness, but she hadn't added it so he assumed it to be irrelevant "or somehow connected "to what would come next. If he felt concern for her at all, he did a good job of keeping it from his face, but he did watch her closely now, reaching to grab the bottle of Dalwhinnie while she finished off her joint. Unscrewing it, he moistened his mouth first and offered it over. In kindness, Bjorn gave her time to compose herself, let that hang in the air, before he asked, "What was in the shoebox?"

She took a deep drink with a slight nod of thanks. "A baby." Gigi's fingers tightened around the neck of the bottle.

Considering, he'd let her hold on to that damn fine, properly-aged alcohol for a little while longer. In times of crisis, he shared freely. A baby in a shoebox " babies didn't seem like they were supposed to fit in shoeboxes, unless it was some seriously big, big feet, so he didn't assume it was alive. "What all exactly did you see, Gigi" ...did something?" Bjorn caught himself short, was quiet, let her sort out what she needed to say.

"Maternal isn't a word I'd use to describe myself but..." she took another pull from the bottle and returned it. Gigi's gaze went from Bjorn's face to her upturned hands as if she still held that shoebox. "It....I mean, he, I think. He was so small and twisted. Like a broken bird. And purple with old crusted blood from his nose and his mouth."

Glass shattering inside the crowd Inn; Bjorn had heard it. But he didn't look toward a window or away, lion's gaze attentively hooded, the generous mouth that was more poet (while the rest of him, the chiseled lines, the strong jaw knew nothing of softness) remained fix, shut for a time, unreadable. Only once did he look apart, brief, very brief, when the hooded creature came out and bounded by. "You don't have to be maternal to flinch inside at seeing something #$%^&* awful," he told her, calmly, taking the bottle back and a drink for himself. Now he really wondered what had been going on in that brothel, what all Gigi'd seen, the whole story around it but the bits she gave him, he knew they must've been bad enough. "He wasn't..." Alive, he'd meant to ask.

She shook her head once. "No." How long his junkie mother had left him there to take care of her own work was anyone's guess. Gigi held her arms loosely around herself for warmth. She considered how she could explain why she felt complicit in the heinous crime. "She's not in a right mind, even before I found the shoebox I knew that. It's what made her take what she did from me." It usually came back to drugs and money for the black sheep of the Granger clan. The prostitute had stolen yola from Gigi despite the semi-frequent displays of her handiwork on thieves, rivals and unruly sliders.

Bjorn remembered the offer Gigi had made to 'Leo' " to him, all messed up and put back together wrong for awhile, but it'd still been him; a part of him, parts of him that hadn't had the memory of him now. Didn't mean he didn't have the memory of Leo, though. It helped him draw a few assumptions, ones he didn't stay attached to, ones he didn't know if they were correct or not, and if there was a sliver of guilt in her voice, hiding underneath the stoned but shaking bravado he witnessed, he'd have somewhere to start. It'd been long enough that he already felt the dull prickle of a buzz start up, the haze of the whiskey smoothing out some of life's rougher edges, and it made him decide to quit the bottle while he was ahead - offer her more, before he'd think of capping it. "You saying she took something from you that helped her into that wrong mindset?" Quietly, but without judgment.

One more sip and Gigi put the bottle down on the railing between them. "She'd been taking plenty of things from me that put her in that mindset. It was gradual. But I was there because she'd crossed the line and taken what was not available to her without permission or payment."

"So long as she knew what she was stepping into..." Bjorn started, half-turning to cap the bottle; from his coat, he grabbed a pen but had no paper, offered a hand for hers to lay down in if it would so he could get to the palm. "You can't blame yourself for other people's actions, or choices. Still, what you saw would've made anybody with anything in them's skin crawl and there's no shame in that. Sometimes, helps to talk." And maybe that's the only thing he could give her, besides whiskey, if she'd let him - an open line to someone to talk to. "About what?s bothering you, or about anything but what is."

Gigi took a leap and let her hand nest in his palm up so he could write on it. She fell silent and watched, not questioning his motives with her normal suspicion. She was talked out for now. "I should get on my way, Bjorn." The slow drawl held a touch of something tender when she used his name and not her own terminology. There was an implied debt of gratitude in there somewhere.

Bjorn scrawled out his phone number there, small but neat numbers in blue ink across a lifeline. "I should, too." He told her, avoiding sentiments that might've been somehow misplaced for all her vulnerability - like taking advantage, he thought, maybe. Pen put back in his coat, he was for his bottle to take with him, but at the top of the stairs he told her: "And I know what?s it like around here, vishya" I'm a man that can keep a secret.? A half-smile, something nice, that'd known kindness before he hit the steps to hail a taxi. He'd been gone hours more than he'd planned, but him and bars had a strange sort of relationship.

Gigi held the hand with extra ink up in a still wave at him. When it came back down she squinted in the dark at it to see if the numbers were clear. She slipped her hand with more care into her coat pocket and opted to walk home.

((Thanks to Bjorn Andrews' and Anya's players for the scene!))

I've fallen into an odd habit lately of singing made up lyrics to myself whenever my brain finds itself idle. There's nothing musical or romantically minstrel about it. I would blame the drugs but I haven't touched yola in years now and everything else pales in comparison to that sweet vortex of sludge.

I want to keep track of what I'm saying as I can remember them. These ditties are nothing but the dirty deeds of things I've seen and more often done. They're spilling out of me as if what little conscience I have left can't take it anymore and wants to hack those memories up and out like yesterday's mucus.

What's odder still is I'm crooning about foul acts that harken back to an earlier time, not last week but years ago.

F**k. Even when I'm trying to analytically examine my brain I'm resorting to this flowery bullsh*t. "Harken," as if I use that word all the live long day.

So what it is it now driving out that little poet I never knew hiding underneath my tongue"

Usually in my line of work I can see most situations others would shy away or puke up their lunch from as just another necessity to keep my head afloat. It's rare that I second guess myself once I decide to muck up my hands with stains that never fully scrub away. And sure, I can admit I've come to even enjoy it in a way that horrifies me in how far I've unraveled from my own humanity.

Or maybe I'm wrong, and that last shred of decency buried deep within my throat has found a way to cry out its truth. And where can I run to when it calls on my voice and travels with me"

——

Song For K:

And down to the river she dragged him, she dragged him, Down to the river she dragged him, still as stone.

Still as stone, and still as heavy, he sank to the bottom, to the bottom with his gold.

Gold will never save him, can't keep him from the cold. Gold will never save him, when his bones roll on the river floor.

She left him for the fishes, for the fishes in the water. She left him in the river, because he would not let it go.

Song For D:

Her face shone with moonlight, pale brightness in the dark. Her cheeks carved from ivory, they held not one flaw. Her ears though did not hear me and her head paid me no mind. That's how I caught her, snuck up on her from behind.

Goodnight, little moon doll, Goodnight, ivory bone bright, Sleep now, keep deaf now, For the timing's just right.