Angel 5: Fight Failure

Love is also a form of communication. [[The largest forces in the world overlap with each other. It's hard to tell where one of us ends, and one of us begins.]]

If I hold you, I can close the space between our bodies. If I hold you, I can forget where you end, and I begin. If I hold you, your warmth reminds me there are some things I can be given. If I hold you, I can remember where you end, and I begin. [[Two hands, held together, make a heart.]]

Do you remember how we met? Do you remember who we are? {(set:$x to (random:1,10)) [[Let's make it up, and by identifying the lies, we can remember what the truth is.|STAGE 1]]}

(if:$x is 1)[One membrane slides inside another. This lets membranes do things that membranes previously had been unable to do. When particularity takes root, it does so with the conviction and fervor of a disease. Only a very small set of beings take the logical next step-- a cluster of membranes operating as a single being, forgetting that they are only so many small and unthinking things dreaming of dreaming. Across many times, and many spaces, membranes coalesce into electric and memetic and causal patterns of thought which claim for themselves the domain of remembering, and telling stories. One of the stories told goes like this: an animal is loved and left to die. There are clusters inside of clusters of membranes, and one of these is called family. Some patterns of thought are convinced that they are part of a membrane, and learn they are not. The unsurmountable difference between a dog and a master is exacerbated by their closeness. "I am not what they wanted me to be," says a cluster of stories. "I always knew that I was something that they aren't. Now they have put me away, because I am going to tear them apart." There is a pattern of thought and it goes like this: it isn't fair. Sleeves of anguish envelop this abandoned animal. There is something that is so other that it was never a person. But it has been imbued with a series of logics that lead it to do something that looks like understanding. There is no unsurmountable difference between an animal and its own thoughts.] (if:$x is 2)[It is a boring night at the bar and she has won so many times at pool that she has begun to play the game in ways that are completely orthogonal to winning. She jumps the balls over each other, she positions the 8-ball so it will careen past five pockets and never touch them, rimming their edge. She is in the middle of chalking a cue when she realizes someone has been watching her from the bar, out of the mirror. A few hours ago, she might have mistaken that moment of eye contact as completely coincidental. ] (if:$x is 3)[] (if:$x is 4)[] (if:$x is 5)[] (if:$x is 6)[] (if:$x is 7)[] (if:$x is 8)[] (if:$x is 9)[] (if:$x is 10)[]

(if:$x is 1)[Think it well: this is the first time in her life she has allowed herself to understand that she has been betrayed. This is the first time in her life she has allowed herself to understand that her family was always going to betray her. Around the corners of the infinite sun in a strangers' eyes, she sees many other times this has happened. She sees herself. She sees the end of time. She sees herself eating her uncle. She sees herself riding to war. She sees herself biting the hand of a trusted friend. She sees a thousand iterations of the same pattern, a thousand ways to be betrayed, to be cast aside, to be abandoned. She realizes that a stranger is narrowing her down. She imagines being splinter-narrow. She imagines existing as a thorn in the eye of everything that was supposed to be known by her. By coincidence, or perhaps on purpose, shackles fall from around her. There is one thought on her mind. It holds her close, the way sunlight holds the last bits of spring snow. There is not something else like her, but there is something that is hers. The name of that thing, she now realizes, is revenge. So did Emma become the beast of Raguel, angel of justice.] (if:$x is 2)[] (if:$x is 3)[] (if:$x is 4)[] (if:$x is 5)[] (if:$x is 6)[] (if:$x is 7)[] (if:$x is 8)[] (if:$x is 9)[] (if:$x is 10)[]

And then, slowly, everything fell apart. In the end, there were no more houses, and no more breath. No more water, and no more libations. No more tigers, and no more iron. Nothing but the endless flat surface and a perfect dispersion of heat. It was time for the end of the end of everything. To live, animals must bring energy into themselves. Despite their protestations, ideas and angels are much the same. If they wish to continue, to see the end, they must do so alone-- But there is an ancient pact between angels, written into the way that they are. This is the taboo against harming another angel. However, in hope of sport, there was no law made that stated that angels could not allow each other to come to harm. So, as long as there has been need, there has been desire. As long as there has been desire, there has been envy. As long as there has been envy, angels have found ways to kill each other. No matter how [[roundabout|Roundabout]]. This is a tradition that will carry on until the end of the world. Most of you who are left are cruel, and those who are cruel will take no offense at killing an angel. For your part, she has always been your weapon, long before she knew that she was. For her part, your terms are good, and she is hungry. If you are willing, you may eat.

The angel of luck is like The beast of luck is like a Jackpot, Angel of Luck: Well, well, well. Fancy the 1/17 chance of seeing you here, nyah? Bingo, Beast of Luck: Spin the wheel a dozen times and everything comes up red. My tail's spinning. How about yours? Jackpot's conspicuous lever pulls itself and the symbols in her eyes whirl through a dozen indiscernible ciphers. When they finally come up, they do so as three red Xs. Jackpot, Angel of Luck: Well, that sounds promising, doesn't it? Raguel, Angel of Justice: Please try to take this seriously. I don't want to dishonor you when I kill you, but it's hard to dignify you when everything you do is so... flamboyant. Bingo, Beast of Luck: You hear that? Even the lovebirds are homophobic. Jackpot, Angel of Luck: Here to overturn Obergefell, girls? Raguel, Angel of Justice:

[[You are on your way to kill angels, and the things that remember them.]]

The beast of magic is like The angel of magic is like an old friend, her warm face pacing through The air around them smells like a bookshop, and your bones grow lighter as the hearth of a distant, inobtrusive fire reaches you. Hecate, Beast of Magic: Well met, old friend, old enemy. Raguel, Angel of Justice: What you loved of me is gone. There's very minimal wit to the end of the world. No places to visit, no one to save. It is a dry and unhappy path. ???, Angel of Magic: [inaudible] Hecate, Beast of Magic: There's here, and there's us. Certainly that counts for something ???, Angel of Magic: [inaudible] Hecate, Beast of Magic: We have no more tricks to spare.

The angel of madness is like a girl clad in black, with earrings like the moon and stars and rings like a hundred knives, shoes tied all the way up to her knees and a skirt whose pleats contain eternity; the beast of madness is like a rabbit wearing a suit, given, by the good feature of his ears, a good foot on her in terms of height. The beast of madness stands behind the angel of madness with her arm held across her body. Upon approach, the air smells like licorice and the ground sinks about feet. Dymphna, Angel of Madness: How remarkably queer. You've lived long past any need to set things to rights. Reuben, Beast of Madness: My lady, I believe that one could imagine any perspective whereupon this encounter, solely, could set things to rights. The beast bows low. You all pretend to be charmed by this gesture, and her face turns towards the beast, as if to offer a kiss. Only her fingers grace the beast's chin. They both find this satisfactory. Dymphna, Angel of Madness: And likewise, any perspective could be considered mad by another. But that would bring us to an impasse, wouldn't it? Whereas I imagine there are greater ends than an impasse you'd prefer to bring upon us. Raguel, Angel of Justice: We'd waste away at an impasse. If one of us passes, they pass for a little longer. I'm sure you can understand. Dymphna, Angel of Madness: I understand perfectly. You're driven, and those who are driven, are most often... driven quite mad! Destroying me won't make you well, you know. The longer you live, the longer you'll live with your failure... and I can tell it's tightened that sword in your head and dragged your arms down with lead. She is very sensitive about the way her job has changed her, sharpened her from her old form. There is no valor in the constellations of related ideas no longer bound to subordinates or allies but wrest about her like a crew of drowning sailors holding onto her like floatsam. Everyone walks with their dead. It's unclear if it is justice Emma, Beast of Justice: You'll find she's sharpened her act. Do you want to find just how sharp it can be? Dymphna, Angel of Madness: I find you all quite dull. Why don't you figure out what to do with me? [Fight.] [Flee.] [Friend.]

Angels can not kill angels, but there is no such statute of limitation against killing an angels beast. Raguel surveys the battlefield with the thousand of eyes that have been used to kill everything that has ever dared to breathe, and she sends down a shaft of light. Hecate yelps, undignified. Raguel, Angel of Justice: It is very simple, lover. There is nothing beautiful left for you to be. Nothing fantastic left for you to subvert. And there is no trick that has not been tried, here at the end of all sets, at the exhaustion of everything. The blood that pours from her is hot coffee, is oil with all its glimmering waves, is a purple sluice that a child would imagine in a witch's cauldron. Her angel stands back, her face a mask of silent fear. Hecate, Beast of Magic: It is all over... there's nothing good left... I would always have had it be you, if no one else... but it makes me... so sad. Emma tears past like a lightning bolt. Her jaws lack around dozens of layer of metal and pull and rend, leaving iron in both of your mouths. You watch as she tears her fathers apart-- she has to imagine them, in her place. Hecate, Beast of Magic: Old trick. Raguel, Angel of Justice: You remember... you and I, we were supposed to be something good for the world. I would be the sword that heroes wore. You would be the boon they were granted. Emma is tearing through a patch of heather in an old forest where no one can scream long or loud enough to cry out her deadname. Emma is breaking chains that were made of magic-- Emma grinds an old trick beneath her teeth with impunity. The angel of magic is a candle in the cave that is her mouth. She is a tsunami against a beach house. She is being too forward, too personal, as a slight favor to the angel of magic. After all, the worst thing you can do is bore an audience. Everyone dies. The angel of magic is hoping that her death will be cathartic for someone she remembers, and misses, and regrets deeply ever becoming involved with. The angel of magic is sitting in a cafe, looking up at dozens of text messages she sent when she must have been inebriated. They are brutal and true and unfair and she has always been so good at finding ways to make entire structures come undone. Her friends, who love her ability to fabulate whole worlds in an afternoon, too often forget that it is much easier to destroy things. Hecate, Beast of Magic: I wish I had always been good. She is bleeding out in your arms now. You kiss her head. Raguel, Angel of Justice: You were good a lot more of the time than I was. Emma returns to you with eyes like a thundercloud, her mouth covered in blood. You remember the way her jaws locked around an infinite maze of horns and gored them all, simultaneously, bone crashing in a non-euclidean garden of teeth. You remember the first time you went to the aquarium and seeing the jellyfish and believing your brother when he told you they were from another world but had since descended to earth to find a princess. You remember waiting for magic to find you. You remember making your own. You remember the spaces where you believed another world was possible. You remember how it felt to come down from believing she was-- Emma, Beast of Justice, picks bone from between her teeth. Emma, Beast of Justice: We did a horrible thing today. Raguel, Angel of Justice puts the body down. Raguel, Angel of Justice: We might do something equally horrible tomorrow. Are you prepared for that? Emotionally? Emma, Beast of Justice: Rags, I'm tired. Can we go... she pauses. There is nowhere to go now. All locations mapped to the coarse binary of action and inaction. Emma, Beast of Justice: We should keep going. But not yet. But first, the two of you have to eat. Their flesh is like cobwebs and rain out of a moving vehicle. Their sinews are like the honeyed dish someone served you one night and refused to give a name and a recipe, claiming it had come to them, butterfly-like, in the heat of that kitchen. Their blood is like a new idea for a story. Beginnings and clever tricks and wonder and awe pool in the space between the pair of them. Their clothes are a lover's clothes, and to eat them is simply to drown on something that was. You have a healthy respect for magic, and what it meant to the world. You all know there is no one to benefit from magic now. There is no system powerful enough to deter this end. [[You are slaked, but not for long.|Roundabout]]

Jackpot, Angel of Luck: Keke. Bingo, Beast of Luck: It's always this, you know. Deep down. Emma, Beast of Justice: I know. Bingo, Beast of Luck: There's no valor in it. She always hated the way you pretend that there is. Raguel, Angel of Justice: We're trying our best not to be pretentious about it. Bingo, Beast of Luck: Eh, fair enough. S'ppose we're all trying and failing to avoid pretension. Bingo smokes a cigarette, the red circle around her mouth contracting into a pile of dust. She exhales, softly, and shakes herself off like the real dogs do. Bingo, Beast of Luck: I'm not that interested in going on without an angel. You look spoken for.

Raguel, Angel of Justice: Surely you understand we can do no such thing. Dymphna, Angel of Madness: Justice makes less and less sense the more I think about it... but that certainly makes you more and more of an ally, if not a comrade. Raguel, Angel of Justice: D

At your side, Emma collapses. Raguel, Angel of Justice: I knew I shouldn't have trusted you. Jackpot, Angel of Luck: Trusted chance? You trusted chance?! I kept my word. Why don't you roll again? Raguel's hand fidgets on the handle. In a moment of frustration, her slight brows knit,

The beast of trial is like a skull cast around an effigy, and the effigy is covered in ribbon of red and gold-fletched arrows piercing its body and it has a horn of brass at its side. The angel of trial is like a fox with eight deft legs, and a heavily set body, she is bound in ribbons of orange and her chest is hefty. A forest that is no longer curls around them, complete with canned birdsong, and something twitches in every muscle you have, an old instinct to kill. Teumes, Angel of Trial: Should have saved us for last. Laelops, Beast of Trial: We've been pursuing you. Raguel, Angel of Justice: I hadn't noticed. You must not have been particularly close. Emma, Beast of Justice: (Nice.) Teumes, Angel of Trial: A good hunter never lets the prey know they are hunted, until it is time they can no longer escape. A good climax is short, sweet, and bloody. Her beast smells her arm. Laelops, Beast of Trial: I couldn't agree more. Emma, Beast of Justice: (I bet they give each other insane head.) Raguel, Angel of Justice: (Emma, you're being disrespectful.) Emma, Beast of Justice: (We have these guys super fucking covered. Who needs justice more than those who die by trial?) Raguel, Angel of Justice: (Don't underestimate our adversaries.) Teumes's legs stamp at the ground, clawing meaning out of the dirt. Teumes: I cannot stand still any longer. Not for your whispering, and not for your foolishness. Make a decision or die. [Fight.] [Flee.] [Friend.]

Raguel, Angel of Justice: Surely I am coming after.

The angel of royalty is like a blue woman with willow hair, and a long and curling horn atop her head, and the scepter clasped gold in her hand, a red and white rose in the other, and she wears a long and billowing dress whose ruffles the beast of royalty has a cascade of oaken hair that falls in ringlets, and has a splotched ruff and violet cape to match splotched freckles, and the beast of royalty carries the orb and her eyes are closed. Lion, Beast of Royalty: You outstrip your rank by approach. You are commanded by my good lord, my sister, to leave. Unicorn, angel of royalty: You have come so far, but no further. As my knight says, Raguel: Sic semper tyrannis. Unicorn, angel of royalty: Deus vult. There is the scent of wormwood in the air as the two angels face each other, palaces glimmering off their bodies. A knight rides toward the castle, does he draw his sword or does he hold it in service to the lord?

The angel of royalty draws no sword, but takes a fighting posture. Her dress and hair billow. Unicorn, Angel of Royalty: Move no closer. Raguel, Angel of Justice: I am from another land, and do not know your borders. Unicorn, Angel of Royalty: Draw Her head cracks. She falls to the ground, pale and breathless. No blood comes from her body, but as she dies, her face crinkles in offense. Without movement, nor voice, her corpse begins to cry, porcelain tears leaking out of her face. Raguel, Angel of Justice: Let them eat. Emma, Beast of Justice: With pleasure. Emma rounds on her counterpart. Lion, Beast of Royalty: My lady! Emma, Beast of Justice: You are to be drawn and courtered with your court. Lion, Beast of Royalty: Aren't you a funny thing. Emma, Beast of Justice: When you swat a house, you shoot the dogs. Lion, Beast of Royalty: You don't think some foreign lord will come for me? Emma, Beast of Justice: There is no one left to come for you, anymore. When there is no structure left to climb, when there is no peasant to put wheat on the back of, when there is no one left who can own a fancy, decorative dog, the coyotes will still be hunting in the offals of your ruined cities. When empires fall, and all their little trinkets are left to fester-- the things pushed to the side will still be on the sides. And they will still be hungry. Lion, Beast of Royalty: A dog is nothing if not decorative! Emma, Beast of Justice: Well, well. Then your mistake was thinking that all of the beasts are dogs. Emma falls upon Lion like night falls upon the kingdom's walls. Emma opens Lion like an animal opens a trashcan. Emma tears open Lion like a Raguel, Angel of Justice: Mangy thing. Emma, Angel of Justice: I have always been against angels. Raguel, Angel of Justice: I was on the side

The faithful dog bays in fear and anger, and you rip out LLewyn's throat in front of his charge. Gelert's mouth opens in a mask of perfect agony, a child's cry ripping out of it with the force to startle the dead birds back into flight from the trees which are no longer. The heavy body of his keeper thudding to the ground, you surge forwards and find somewhere to-- -- pretend you don't hear it, the -- -- ugly ugly ugly thing you make of a -- -- mistletoe and yule berry flesh and you-- -- that's a child, that's a child, that's a child. You waste nothing. You feel the weight of it dripping down your chin, extended out into a snout. Far enough sunken back that words are strangled between teeth. You do not recognize how small the fingers are, how the plates are still settling in the head. You do not think about the soft hair and skin, moving your mouth around them. There is a pool of blood on the blankness, a spot that will not heal. Raguel, Angel of Justice: Let's go, Emma. Emma, Beast of Justice: Eat it. Her eyes are red holes. Her mouth is a Rorscach test. You lean down. You close your eyes. The meat is sour.

The angel of innocence is like a child with a crown placed upon golden hair and with eyes the size of saucers, and the beast of innocence is cloaked all in fur, from moustache to brow to neck, with a plaid cloak slung about it. The angel of innocence stands at the side of the beast of innocence and pulls, gently, when it does not stand behind the beast's leg, as to hide itself from people. Upon approach, the air is filled with the scent of mistletoe, and eyes begin to water. LLewyn, beast of innocence: Lo. What brings you to account, Emma. Emma, Beast of Justice: We are the last of the last, and the end of the end. There is nothing for us but to meet here. Raguel, Angel of Justice: Surely, child, and beast, you can not expect innocence to survive the end of the world. Gelert, angel of innocence: Yet we must continue, as all open-eyed things do, dewy and fresh. For if there is no beginning, there can be no end. Raguel, Angel of Justice: The last beginning is over. The last innocence snuffed. There is nothing to birth or be reborn from. You must see the futility of this endeavor? LLewyn, beast of innocence: There is this. So it can not be so. Gelert, angel of innocence: I can see no futility, as I can see you here clearly, and as I am here, unknowing despite it all. The last child set up against the gulf. Are you to claim that it is not my place to have a future? Would you kill the last child? Raguel, Angel of Justice: We are here, are we not. LLewyn, beast of innocence: Does it not go against your nature to order the death of one who has done no wrong? Raguel, Angel of Justice: I order nothing. I simply unhook my dog from its wall. What it does with its teeth is no business of mine. Gelert, angel of innocence: You reckon with your own nature to kill me. Llewyn, beast of innocence: And you will not

Emma, Beast of Justice: I can't do this. The moment of indecision is all LLewyn needs to come down on your beast with the force of a waterfall. The back of her body erupts in a spray of blood as her neck is torn clean open, blood spraying against mangy gray-green fur. LLewyn's ember eyes fix on yours and a growl deep in her throat rumbles through your bones. Teeth extend from Emma's wound and pierce her skin, tripping her, but you can see the light fading from your beautiful girl's eyes. She is

The angel of progress is like a sun with leering eyes and a body of fire; and the beast of progress is like a rusted satellite with a head containing the quivering sihlouette of a dog, who is reigned in tubes through which liquid seeps, and its body is impaled by the instruments that move it. Gallileo, Angel of Progress: How's the old rag coming along? Laika, Beast of Progress: (Sir, we should run.) Gallileo, Angel of Progress: Nonsense! A good idea is justice being done onto the world, the mastery of science has put so many things to right that we're basically family. And if God fights on the side of anyone, she fights on the side of the long arc of progress. Raguel, Angel of Justice: And what a long arc it has been. Gallileo, Angel of Progress: Give me eternity and even the most imperceptible of arcs curve. And I suppose we've curved back around to your endpoint... drifting endlessly in the dark, looking for some brittle semblance of purpose. Gallileo, Angel of Progress: Why,

Ao god. The sun is as hot as it ever was. Hotter than human reason. Hotter than the bonds of care. The sun is as hot as it can go, hot past the point where mortal minds keep measuring. The white mouth of a future that will never come, containing it. The white mouth of a future that makes every component of nature an interlocking scale in the stomach of a basilisk a thousand miles long. Galileo: I have taken on the names of a thousand animals who have spent their lives polishing one brick for my temple. If the final technology is death, then I will hold it as I have held a thousand peaceful and angry queries, tight to my chest, ambivalently. Emma: You have never been ambivalent. Galileo: No. Laika, kill her. Laika: I can't get close to it. Galileo: I am not asking. There are a thousand ways for me to draw up you moving closer. You will take one of those paths. Laika: I don't want to. I'm scared. I'm scared of the sun. The dog in her head holds tight to the wall of the luminous helmet it's encased in.

You are sitting in your bed. It smells slightly damp. There's still a ringing in your ears. You have been in your bed for a long time. You are not sure that there is anywhere outside of your room, anymore. Sometimes at night you feel like you might be stuck in a simulation, somewhere no one else has ever been. Sometimes you remember company as flares of light and noise painted on the nearest solid surface. Sometimes you remember ugly snarls of sound and your shoulders rose, waiting for the inevitable descent of some revelation, like a laceration. You are alive. The clothes on your body have stuck to it with sweat. You lose the house. You live on the streets. You struggle back home. The demons get quieter but never go away. You breathe in. You breathe out. You are alive. You have a child. You lose a child. You fracture. You reconvene. You meet up with old friends. You find out how many of them are gone. You make more. You eat better than you used to with what teeth you have left. You make it out of your bed in the morning. You stay in your bed and find things to do from there. You are alive, alive, alive, alive, alive, alive, alive. Raguel, Angel of Justice: Never tell me to run again. Emma, Beast of Justice: Why? Raguel, Angel of Justice: I-- Emma, Beast of Justice: ... Dymphna, Angel of Madness: Next time? We'll buy you a round. Emma, Beast of Justice: Fuck off.

Emma: Do you still feel like a girl, now that all the men are dead? Raguel: What a question for the feminist utopian. Are you going to tell me you can only call yourself a girl if there are men around? Seems a little misogynist. Emma: Is there anything more misogynist than a woman? Raguel: Yes, the absence of one. I say we don't define ourselves in opposition, darling. Emma: Let's say I wanted to. Raguel: You couldn't have come up with a more inventive gender identity. Emma: I'm in opposition to both binary genders. I'm only stating that the female traits center on female anatomy, even if they don't require it. Why have any allegiance to bodies when ours are made of thought? Raguel: You think it's like fancying ourselves class analysts after the social body collapses in every meaningful way. Emma: No. There's still class analysis. Raguel: You think we'll encounter them? The angel of class analysis? Emma: Can't it be called something else? Raguel: The angel of... justice. Emma: You are no Marxist. Raguel: The arc of the universe bending towards justice helpfully does not define whose justice we are bending towards. With some cultural relativism, you get a stew of plausible deniability. Emma: Bazinga! There's our woman. Raguel: Cultural relativism? Emma: That's fairly obvious. But I was going to go with plausible deniability. We're almost there, aren't we? To another cluster of traits which together define something easily recognized in the abstract? Raguel: ... I feel like it doesn't quite work as well, for gender. Emma: Because it's primarily an affirimative quality. Do you think you're a woman? Raguel: I have always been depicted as a woman. Emma: That especially doesn't make you a woman. Do you know how many boats are trans men? Raguel: Are you thinking of leaving me for public transportation again. Emma: This isn't public. And no. Because I will never, thematically rise above the level of a steed or harbinger. Public transportation-- the sweet sourceblood of the country-- they'll never deign to fall in love with me. Raguel: Are you a woman? Emma: I'm a dog. Raguel: That means you could be both. Bitch or cur? Emma: Cur. Raguel: She/her? Emma: This time around. Because I don't want you to be lonely. Raguel: I do sometimes feel more female in the abstract. It doesn't seem so confining. Emma: I have cut off and regrown my tits hundreds of times recently. It has not stopped my propped-open jaw from being representative of the devouring mother. Raguel: We will never be mother, maiden, crone. Does excerpting ourselves from female societal roles and cycles make us un-female, in some way? Emma: Fellas, is it androgynous to be a hypothetical? Raguel: Do you think those people tied to the trolley tracks have vaginas. Emma: I think they're effeminized by the symbol of masculine power and fertility running over them. Much like the phallus runs over the vagina. Raguel: I think we might both hate gender, Emma. Emma: Damn. Raguel: I want to be a woman for now. It's tenative. I'm not very attached to it. I think the role I perform... how I want to be seen... the ways I want to move through the world... they don't lend well to anything. But I keep clinging, nonetheless, to the signifier. I don't know what it means to me. I would like to have it anyways. Emma: I like that I'm technically both transfeminine and transmasculine. You know, by virtue of everywhere, all at once, all of the time. Raguel: Specifically 'trans' to both. Emma: In the process of becoming. Raguel: The world's ending. Emma: Still becoming. By having been anything else. Raguel: ... Emma: Come on. Raguel: 'Trans' isn't a gender. You need to affix it to something. Emma: I think we might both hate gender, Raguel. Can we enact justice on it, too? Raguel: Emma... you're being ridiculous. Emma: I'm a dog. And I'm what I wasn't. And I'm a lesbian with you. And I'm a thing in the weave of God. Raguel: Yes. Emma: Yes. That's it. Raguel: You look fantastic tonight. Emma: Thank you. I try.

Emma: What if we lose? Raguel: It will be painful, and then it won't be. Emma: It doesn't sound all that bad. I take it you're not afraid of dying? Raguel: No. Emma: Rags... then why are we still doing this? Raguel: I want you to be the last thing in the world. The last thing that exhales. Emma: I think you would have been a horrible thing, back when things were horrible. Those sort of logics never go well. Raguel: I have been horrible and banal, final and trivial. My logics are dire in execution, flexible in practice. I must admit that this defers completely from anything I name myself, am, or pretend to be-- it is my first and last act as a true individual, rather than a thread pulled from everything. As a woman, and not an angel, I have to admit: I will do anything possible not to let you die. Emma: ... Raguel: That was too forward. Emma: I think I'm like you... Raguel: All the more reason for us to keep fighting. Emma: For someone who barely wants to fight? Raguel: Yes. Emma: ... Raguel: I'm sorry. Emma: No, let's... let's keep on.

Emma: Who did you love before me? Raguel: I couldn't love before I met you. Any more than a math problem can be said to love its answer. Emma: A math problem does love its answer. Raguel: I believe, once evaluated, you are the answer. Emma: You can not possibly not have thought of the fact that a math problem can have multiple answers. Raguel: Multiple answers, sure. A field of them, even. Those fields are their own answer. My behavior is fixed, I will hold you to no such principles. Just know I bend causality to hold you. My behavior, my system itself, is the universe moving to learn how to love you. Emma: You take away my free will, just by having none. Raguel: Perhaps you still have some. Don't rule yourself out. Emma: ... Raguel: Is there a problem? Emma: It's just sad... knowing it's all up to me. I feel like I'm alone, sometimes. Raguel: Is that why you keep pretending that I'm a person. Emma: You were a person. I saw you, that night in the diner. I saw you, in Raguel: It was the light from the neon signs. It was the light from over the hill breaking a new day in. It was the light from the battered bulb the moths all swarmed around. Emma: No, it wasn't. Raguel: If I was there, it was because everything has always been there. Every idea, every story. I don't experience it in order-- as I said. The universe is moving to learn how to love you. The shape of that motion is written into every pattern of turbulence in every world, some minute part of every action that has ever been taken. You were there, always, becoming what you would always be. So I was there, with you, learning how to become something so that I could be close to you. Emma: I wish you had other girlfriends, Raguel: There are a lot of other concepts which have all been, Emma: Magic. Raguel: Not often, but we keep in touch. Kindness. Mercy. Law. Imprisonment. Honor. Depravity. Fear. Order. Many others. I am glad... admittedly... to see every angel that once held the world together, gone, and its remnants, less a congregation of the universe's best ideas and more a medley of some themes it was begrudgingly fond of. Emma: By no means are we even qualified to make final hundred, let alone an actual bracket. Fucked up. Raguel: I believe that it is the pair of us who have made it this far. I believe that the universe is compelled by us. If the exhaustion of all entropy is the heat death, then our selves, what we are, provides a font of entropy strong enough to weather endings. There is so much narrative irresolution in us. An ambiguity, a bittersweetness, in any proposal, which lets a little linger. Emma: The tension... or just the concept? Raguel: Everything. Emma: Then it's also on, if we think they deserve justice, isn't it? As long as there's someone left to be judged... someone must judge them. Raguel: That's not entirely besides the point, I will concede. Emma: Surely there were other avatars through which you could have made your will known. Raguel: There most certainly were. However, the configuration of everything-- Emma: You're in love with me. Raguel: Justice is just a word. We could have been anything, everywhere, we could be something new again, in what is after nothing at all. Outside of the boundaries of one telling. Outside of the possibilities dreamed by one universe. If there is a way for a story to be told, I want us to be written into the heart of it. I want to be as simple as gravity and I hope you want it too, because I do not think I can stop being what I am. Emma: Well, that's, I mean, it's sort of like a marriage with no divorce, right? Raguel: Metaphysical engagement is sort of like a marriage with no divorce. Emma: This sounds wildly unhealthy for anyone who wants to engage in a normal Emma: I'm not a person... I'm a take on the Fenrir mythos... I am supposed to be eternally bound, until I end the world. I... have been becoming an idea all my life. Moving up, step by step, until I remember things I shouldn't. Until I am things I'm not. Every time I step closer to you, I feel less like anything, and more like everything. What you want from me... is to narrow possibility itself around us. Raguel: To hold you forever. Emma: I've already committed to that. Raguel: Yes? Emma: You already know that. Raguel: I'm sorry. It doesn't feel right not to ask. Emma: It's difficult... what we are is outside of asking. It feels like setting a poor example, to be romancing primarily on the scale of narrative logics. No one does it. There were many millions of versions of us who did and didn't work out and for whom our connectedness was only a miniscule fraction of their personality. Raguel: But we were there. We were always there, and will always be there, and will inevitably resolve. Emma: We were always there. Raguel: The multiverse as a book of fond memories. Emma: Godhead cast as a honeymoon. Raguel: I don't think anyone else is so happy about it. Emma: I think they are, but I think most of them, to be quite honest, don't overthink it. Raguel: And I do keep you at bay. Enough for the sweetness of contact, the nectar of sex with one who is not oneself. Enough that we're usually different from each other. Some things like us are one thing, or close enough to one thing that they don't always have separate names. One arm can hurt angels, and the other can not. Emma: Here's one cell in my body that can kill an angel. The rest is an angel. Raguel: Everything is everything. We have to come up with some rules, or we can't tell a very good story. Emma: I wanted to hear a very good story about you having sex with someone who isn't me. Raguel: The triangulation of desire is a kink that I have a hard time engaging with to the degree which you do. Emma: We will never achieve perfect apotheosis because you will not have a threesome. Raguel: I never said that. We've had plenty of threesomes. Emma: Like this? Raguel: No. No more threesomes now that we are only the barest version of ourselves, and we have to kill what remains. Emma: The angel of threesomes has since passed on. Raguel: Canonically, yes. Emma: I don't see how justice can exist in a world like that. Raguel: ? Emma: Judge, jury, defendant? Raguel: No plaintiff? Emma: It's really an orgy. Raguel: Ensemble cast. Emma: I think you've fucked over everyone. Raguel: At some point or another. Emma: And I ate their dad, or something. Raguel: You have killed a lot of patriarchs. I don't think you can expect everyone to be punk rock about it. Emma: I'm sad I'll never be able to kill anyone's shitty dad, ever again. Raguel: I'm in love with the Freudian compulsion to ursurp the father. Emma: The faggot version of it. Raguel sighs belageuredly. Raguel: Yes.

Raguel: There's nothing to catch anymore. Emma: Hey, batter batter. As long as there's a glove, and a pitcher, I'm sure we'll be fine. Raguel: Would you Emma: Categorically! Raguel: How does that differ from a virus? Emma: Like humans, our body defines... what is, and isn't Raguel: So who decides who's you? Emma: History, my dear Watson. History Raguel: If nothing will ever happen again... there are no more contractions. Emma: Would you like me to invent one for you? Raguel: With your hands? Emma: With my tongue. Raguel:

Raguel: Do you have friends? Emma: Not right now, if that's what you mean. Raguel: It wouldn't be a betrayal. Emma: It would be wildly inconvenient. Raguel: Sentiment has never stopped me from killing anybody. Emma: Does that mean you have friends. Raguel: No. Emma: You're lying. I can tell. Raguel: What's a friend? A friend in practice? Someone you consider a friend, regardless of the reality? Someone who was a friend at one point? Can friends be dead? Emma: Oh my god do you have to turn every single question I ask you into a semantic wanking contest! Raguel: ... Yes. Emma: ... I'm an idiot. Please answer the question. Raguel: I miss Hecate. Emma: Your ex doesn't count as a friend. Raguel: You're friends with all your exes. Emma: Except the ones I've killed, eaten, mauled... Raguel: Oh. Emma: I mean, some of them, too, it's... it's a dog thing. I promise I'm not just going around killing people at random. Raguel: That is what we're doing. Emma: The scary thing is. Raguel: I know what you're going to say. Emma: That's probably why I have to say it, no? Raguel: Sound point. Emma: I'll sound her point, heyo. Raguel: ... Emma: The longer we travel this road, the less friends I feel like I've ever had. It's like when you go on a plane. The houses get smaller and smaller below you. It feels small now, but it's still perfectly intact. It almost feels like some horrific cosmic joke to look back at what I was and see that nothing is different. Raguel: It will only get worse from here. So you should tell me about your friends. Emma: When I was very young, there was one. The first person to put their hands in my mouth. When things came down to it, they never had my back-- would whinge and lie and cry out of why they'd always take our bullies' side, told me everything their parents told them about me like I was supposed to atone for it. Thing was, back then I didn't have any friends, so I didn't know what to compare how they treated me to. I thought that was probably about how everyone's friends treated them, would scour the internet for friendships like mine in the cartoons I watched to prove I was right. Deep down, I knew they sucked, really bad, but that was, some of the charm, I guess. They treated me how I felt I should be treated, they were better than my family. And at the end of the day, they kept telling me, and I knew, that it was hard to love me, that they were giving up a lot to even try. It was a horrible town. We had a horrible life. Just having anyone say they'd choose me. No matter what they did. That meant something. Raguel: Ah. You've told me about them. Emma: I think they understood why I snapped. They never reached out when I left town, but sometimes I'd see them looking at my Instagram stories, or, whatever time it was, something like that. I knew-- they were watching me. In a cowardly way. No braver then than they had ever been, but also no further away. Being the one who ratted me out to my parents when I ran away didn't change anything between us. Landing them in the hospital didn't change anything between us. Nothing could. I guess they're dead, now, though. I don't think anything's changed. Even still. Raguel: It's comforting, isn't it? Emma: Yes. I want... to hold people close to me. In pain, in love, in fear, and anger. I want to be close to them, so close we can't tell where one of us ends and the other begins. I want to understand them so well that their actions feel like physics. Even if I hated them. That was a kind of love. That's how love is to me. Raguel: I heard you calling me for a long time. Emma: It's in your nature to wait. I don't blame you. Thunder follows long after lightning, bruising follows long after the wound. Sometimes we don't realize how far away the storm is, how bad we got hurt. Same way, recompense happens long after the crime. Sometimes not at all. It's enough that you were there, when I got out of that town. It's enough that you love me. Raguel: Was this what you wanted? Emma: It's exactly what I wanted. In every life, in every body. I'm a question, you're an answer. I was a cult of one, and you were my religion. Raguel: But I'm glad you have other stories too. Emma: You don't, do you? Raguel: I do, but they're like our lives. I make them up. They're illusions on a wall that are real as we suppose them to be, or explanations for natural phenomena. People want the world to look like them, so they imagine a world that does. When that way of seeing the world gains traction, the world sees them back, by power of collective delusion. There's no one left to delude, but there's no one around to decide if we're real, either now. An afterthought. A memory. Shadows carrying on, waiting for the speed of light to tell them they don't exist. Emma: It's soon. Raguel: Not yet. Emma: And the meantime, them. Raguel: There are many stories about who I do and don't consort with. They are and aren't the stories about who I do and don't love. Emma: The thing I asked for... knowing perfectly. That's how angels know each other. Raguel: That is how angels know each other. Emma: And how we know each other is different. Raguel: The opening mouth and the sound of its own voice. Emma: I wish I could tell that little kid. Raguel: She knows. That's why I exist, now. Emma: I wish someone had listened to me when I told them, imperfectly, what was to come. I wish they had loved me enough to believe me.

Gallileo is like the sun, and wordlessly does the violence which the sun is well known for. Through the unending glare of fire, they stalk on in silence. Gallileo, Angel of Progress: You have no purview over light. Raguel, Angel of Justice: It is not Raguel, Angel of Justice: For the world which would cast aside its people in the dream of the invincible thing... Gallileo, Angel of Progress: There have been some bad apples. Raguel, Angel of Justice: For

You have been good all your life. It doesn't matter. A few things stack up the wrong way. Bad omens. A murmuring of crows over your house. Sometimes you swear to god someone is there and going to kill you. Sometimes you are compelled to keep using the same dish over and over again for weeks because the others are poisoned. You collapse the way everything collapses-- not spectacularly, but via a set of prolonged inabilities to maintain your structure. By the time you have caved in on yourself, there is no one left to turn to. So many relatives dead or unwilling to talk to you. So many kindnesses no longer available as you find words slip through your fingers like water. It's an ugly way to live, dying. The pair of you. You and your dog. You and your little dog who doesn't know anything besides the back of this car, now, misses nothing, holds close to you, loves you. Loves you. Loves you. Reuben, Beast of Madness: It's time to go. Raguel, Angel of Justice: You didn't get me. That was the cold. Reuben, Beast of Madness: Nonetheless. Raguel, Angel of Justice: You and your unfair tricks. You and your old, crooked existences. You and your ugly jacket. Reuben, Beast of Madness: Peace, angel. No one flees from this. We tried to make it fast and painless. Raguel, Angel of Justice: Then couldn't you have... thrown me out a window or something. Reuben, Beast of Madness: Excuse me. Raguel, Angel of Justice: My dog. Please don't hurt my dog. Reuben, Beast of Madness: Who do you think is going to take care of your dog? Her warm breath. The back of the car. She doesn't know you're dead yet. Nudges you with a too-dry nose. Mumbles dissent. Something familiar along the line of those crooked teeth. Something you recognize in the way they're turned out. Something not doglike. You want to say something to her, to ask her to save you. But corpses can do no such thing.

Emma: Raguel. , angel of innocence: I do it with no malice. There is no hate in my heart. Emma feels the edges of her fingers turn to salt.

A distant crowd falls upon you. They have no names, and they have no faces. The tin soldiers hit you with their batons and you are so so so familiar, you have raged for and against them. ???, Angel of Royalty: Did you forget whose leash you're on, dove? Raguel, Angel of Justice: Pardon me. My dog must not have chewed all the way through it.

Emma: It's a pretty rhythm, isn't it. I imagine to you more than most. Raguel: You're correct. But bold to assume so. Emma: Assume your mastery over the narrative form? Is justice not a deft stroke of Freytag's Pyramid? Do we not extrapolate movements into societal morays, obligations? Raguel: Nothing good was ever going to come of us, Emma. We'll die the way we lived. Emma: I think if you didn't see good in me, you wouldn't be seeing me. Raguel: I feel bad, sometimes. Emma: How erotic. Raguel: It's not our fault that we are what we are. I don't think we can stop being it, though. It's not something angels are tasked with. The serrated part of a meat-eating tooth is necessary but it is not kind. You can not blame the property of serration for existing in the world-- for being necessary for eating. Emma: Some

Raguel: Can you eat vegetables? Emma: Not relevant anymore, I'd wager. Raguel: No. Emma: Unless we face the angel of photosynthesis. Some of you taste like plants, no? Are plants? Are better adjusted to a plant's face than a human one? Raguel: A lot of the ones still left are smarmy. The sun went out so long ago. Scavengers die after producers. Emma: You ever think about how fucking awesome it would have been to be around when the dinosaurs all died out if you were a vulture? Raguel: I imagine both of us are largely contemporary. Emma: Retroactively, you could exist since life has, in simple prey-pred turnabouts if nothing else. Assign cruelty to a being here, avenge it there, justice. And some animals have fairness. Raguel: Largely contemporary. Have you been applied retroactively to every dog? Emma: That sounds like a lot of metaphysical responsibility for someone whose established traits as something approaching godhead include "fratricide" and "being the thing that kills the patriarch during the apocalypse". Raguel: Well-behaved women hardly make history. Emma: Awesome! I am going to kill us both. Raguel: But would you eat the bodies. Emma: Any act I make to wound is done to eat. My teeth project damage insofar as they can be said to gouge for a consumptive purpose. I'm not wasteful. As an idea, I'm a sticky one, and the entropy I produce is low. Raguel: Is it an idea that could eat fruit. Emma: You have a lot of pineapple recently or something? Raguel: There are no more pineapples. Emma: Can we throw in the towel early? Raguel: Please be serious. Emma: There's nothing constraining our conduct besides your personal sensitivity. Is this an area.... no. I've probed something personal. Why are you invested in me eating plant matter. Does it finally bother you that I'm not human? Raguel: I'm not human. Emma: That's not the point in at least three different ways and you know it. Raguel: Name them. Emma: One! Humanity here functions as a font of who can and can not be empathized with. You want to believe I have the same-- or more-- ability to be empathized with than you do. You still think of me as having a life. Raguel: Guilty as charged. The vegetarianism then would be a remarkably non-unique thing to focus on as the locus for your lack of humanity as narratively divined. Emma: I'll take that. Reason two! You are making an objective attempt to know something about me you don't know. However, any way you choose not to know me is just that-- a choice. You could easily ascertain the answer, the same way you realize you're bruised by touching your own leg and feeling it. Raguel: It's not so fun. I think it's a waste. Emma: Three. You pity me. I was born obviously made to kill. It unsettles you. You have no problem believing monsters exist. It's when you get close to them that you think your monsters have subtlety. A cut above the rest. A person wearing a monster's skin, who still has the teeth for vegetables, fruit. Someone who could go back and live happily, if given the chance, in the times before. Emma: No. There's nothing to me but the killing, Raguel. Raguel: I think you're lying to yourself. Emma: I think you invented me. Raguel: I didn't. Emma: I certainly didn't invent you. Raguel: You ate broccoli. I just remembered. Emma: Oh? Raguel: We were on a date. It was that specific iteration of our dynamic where nothing particularly good or bad happened. We were lovers for a year, got over each other to get into highly turbulent marriages? Never found our way back to each other. You ordered the steak, but you ate broccoli on the side. Didn't leave anything on the plate. Emma: Oh... I remember. I guess the whole point is moot, then? Raguel: Sorry. It was rude of me to interrogate you. Emma: You feel like you need to. I understand. Raguel: I wanted to hear you answer.

Emma: Technically, he's my uncle. Raguel: Metaphysically I think he counts as a dad on account of the patriarch positioning. Emma: I mean, patriarchy is rule by fathers, not men. And my father was technically different, in that, also queer, also not always a dad-- I've been thinking, I should really cut it with the origin. Already the name makes it hard to parse where I came from. It was sort of part of the whole premise that I would disappear from what I was. But I do like to bring it up occasionally? Raguel: This is your third favorite topic. I have counted. Emma: Oh shit. What are one and two? Raguel: Metaphysics and having sex with me. Emma: I'm really annoyed that the metaphysics beats out having sex with you. Raguel: It dominates if you refactor using who initiates what conversation. Emma: Oh. Okay. Good. Raguel: I was being generous in lowering the preeminence of your daddy issues. Emma: I have mommy issues, too. I think you're being reductive. Raguel: Those are? Emma: Yuri of absence. Raguel: Ah, narrative insignificance. It's killed millions of women in their prime. Emma: Also the rope kink. Raguel: Wonder Woman. Emma: You're quippier than usual. Raguel: I have to carry double duty in our dynamic if you get into backstory logics. I want to exist as a perfect jumping off point for your own introspections, and from experience you feel most supported when someone is making the sort of awkward half-baked comedy you provide to others in moments of distress. Emma: I feel most supported by those A-cups eyyyyy! Raguel: This is just unprofessional. Shall we continue? Emma: No! I want to know-- if you did have to give yourself a backstory. If you had to commit to a singular identity, and then cast your neuroses into a narrative-shaped blob, what would it look like? Who's your supporting cast? Raguel: Will you be there. Emma: You, always, are the rope constraining me from causing the apocalypse. Raguel: In this "human AU"-- Emma: I didn't say human. Raguel: I have a pet dog. Emma: White woman coded. Don't look up the dogpill. Raguel: Never mind. There is a beast ravaging the landscape that is like a giant storm. At thematically relevant moments I am compared to it. There is a property of doggedness, of hauntedness, that is returned to once and again. To others it might seem like a core aspect of my personality, but keen readers will see that it feels like something other to me-- like Raskolnikov, I have schisms erupting within my very being. On the other side of the mirror is you, dear Emma. You are the darkness in me which believes the system must be rent apart, slaughtered entirely. You are the justice that lives in alleyways with studded bats. You are the part of me that wants to kill-- Emma: Your father. Raguel: No, he's largely irrelevant. Emma: Your mother? Raguel: Yes. My mother, God. Emma: A Jesus who doesn't want to be a Jesus. Raguel: I'm at risk of becoming a patriarch. You aren't. Emma: Woah. I think I'm the only one here who identifies as a man. Raguel: It's a figurehead position. Feminism dictates that anyone can become the norm, the institution itself, the state. Patriarch is one word for it because it's an easily identifiable way that power replicates itself locally within the confines a Western target demographic will be able to point to and project onto. Of course, this is a mostly male field, hard, singular power-- Emma: Like the phallus. Raguel: Now you're just being obtuse. Emma: Because I'm reading? Raguel: Fair enough, carry on. My intended and continued point is that through an act of perfect violence I could destroy everything which currently shackles me, but I would take on the titanic role of envisaging what comes after. The curse of the revolutionary is to become the state, no? Emma: Oh my god. It's that with a syrup of "doesn't doing violence make us bad as them". No. Always rebel. Always kill. Raguel: I think you would have really enjoyed being a soon to be overturned party head in the Soviet Union. Emma: Are you asking me if I'm obtuse and suicidal. Raguel: No, I'm affirming it. Emma: I think this is sort of like you telling me what you think of dads. This whole conversation mainly came up because I was thinking if it would be thematically fitting or ironic for me to have a dad bod. Raguel: You're a wolf. Why does this need to be about dads again? Emma: Oh, yeah. I forgot about that.

Emma: Do you hate anyone. Raguel: Locally or universally? Emma: Wow, spoken like someone who constantly projects herself as a possibility space to avoid having any emotions she can own like an adult. Raguel: Emma: I do when it means our conversations have to go into philosophy again, instead of commiseration. Raguel: Emma, I really do appreciate your focus on particularity. I think it gives our dynamic the much-needed verismillitude that makes us compelling enough to warrant our continued existence. Your carnal needs remind me of the primacy of the body, the folly of transhumanism as a means of escaping culpability towards others and our responsibility for the world, and more importantly, the singularity that is love. Emma: Ok. Do you hate anyone? Raguel: I was never a huge fan of Dymphna. Emma: Because of her stupid fucking giant butler rabbit pretending to be dog themed? Raguel: No, because she's a cop-out. Madness is a beginning and not an ending, I think she revels too much in process and the eternal 'now' to properly interrogate herself or the situation surrounding her. That is-- Emma: You hate her fucking thigh highs and the pigtails and the skirt and the use of leather and the black on black on red on black color scheme and you think her spikes are ostentatious and in general you're convinced that her lack of class is sort of poseur-ish and takes away from, instead of adds to, the point she's trying to make. Raguel: Is it so much to ask? Emma: I think she just wants to look like the protagonist and the sobering reality of it causes her to not have the fun she wants with it. Raguel: I can hate that though, can't I? For heaven's sake, I put a giant sword through my face to remain on theme. Emma: As much as I really like kissing the sword, I liked when we lived forever in a million worlds and oh yeah-- you had a normal face with eyeballs on it. Raguel: Still didn't have a mouth. Emma: You had lips. Sometimes. Raguel: I like how I look. Do you not like how I look? Emma: You look like you're in pain. Raguel: Everyone is in pain. And for another point, anyone who pretends they aren't. Emma: But the deceit's-- Raguel: It being a strategy doesn't make it an effective strategy, nor is it an effective statement on the times. Emma: I look normal. I'm part of the problem. Raguel: I like your bomber jacket and dog ears and your mop of greasy hair. I don't want you to look any worse than you do already. The smell would be abhorrent. Emma: From the look? Raguel: You know what I mean. I know what happens to you when you get depressed. Or when you sit in a field of heather for a thousand years biting your chains. Emma: You didn't like being bitten? Man, we really are learning some unfortunate things about each other tonight. Raguel: You were trying to tear my very being out of existence. Emma: I got interred for a crime I hadn't committed yet! Raguel: That happens a lot! Emma: You can't muster up some hate for that? Raguel: You killed everyone! Emma: Everything was broken! Raguel: Then you understand why I hate you, sometimes. Because you are necessary, and because everyone will die. Emma: People die all the time. Usually for doing nothing wrong. Raguel: Yes. Emma: It's easy for people with power to make it so, if they suffer, everyone suffers. But justice means, they suffer too. Everyone should receive what they deserve in the end. Raguel: I love you. I want you to kill me. Emma: I can't do that. We're the same thing. Raguel: Someone else will eat my body. And I'll hate them, so much. Emma: I know. Me too. I'll hate them with you. Raguel: I love you. Emma: I love you too. Let's find something out there we can convince ourselves deserves to die.

Emma: Do you want to drive? Raguel: I don't want to drive. Emma: Why not? Raguel: I like holding onto your body. Emma: Mmm... Raguel: It's so lovingly rendered. Every roll, every hair... every skin cell. Emma: It's storebought. Raguel: Really? From whose womb? Emma: I suppose I've never talked much about my mother. She's not my mother anymore. Raguel: You have a clear canon. Emma: Not really. You? Raguel: I have told you a few times, I have no one to be born through. Emma: Nothing you're even particularly attached to? Raguel: No. Just you. Emma: You haven't... viewed a courtroom as a womb, or... Raguel: The aesthetics of justice are old. A stone and a blade. A wounded party and a victim. I take no joy in these things. I hold no allegiance with them. By the time any story has been bought to my gates, something has already gone wrong. In accordance with what I was made to be, I have chosen to be a cold face with no eyes, a blank body with no allegiance. Emma: So you don't serve the state. Raguel: Lord, Emma, I hope I don't. I'm justice, not the law. Emma: ... Raguel: But to answer the question you meant to ask, I am no one's daughter. Not even hers. The human urge to do anything is not enough of a mother. There is no gestalt in it. Emma: I came from a big family. Raguel: I know, Emma. Emma: Full of people who put me in a deep wood. Raguel: I remember. I was there. My heart broke for you. Emma: I guess that makes me someone's child, doesn't it. You can't disappoint a family you don't have. Raguel: You can not have one anymore, can't you? That's how it can go. Emma: I feel like we've settled at this point that this story is like throwing wine down the drain. Some other time, I'll be upset about it. Right now, I can't even bring myself to care. Raguel: That's alright. Emma: Would you have liked a mother? Is that what this is? Raguel: Sometimes, I think about my semiotic affiliations. I think about your affiliations, what people are and aren't to you. I wonder what it would be like to be warm in the way that people are sometimes warm. I suppose that's a sort of desire-- a gesture towards humanity that I've had recently. Emma: Can you use some textural verismillitude to fill out the scene, love. Raguel: I want to know what books she read to me. If I wear my hair the same way she does. If she would approve in my choice of earrings, if she would grimace with sympathy when she saw the sword through my face. If she would defend my calls when I make them. If she would feed me her body in a warm soup so I could make it to the end of the world. I want someone to look out for me, that's all. Emma: I think you're a lot more attached to these things than I've been. Raguel: I suppose I'm presupposing they would accept me as a daughter. Emma: You wouldn't think it would be that hard, would you? Raguel: It's certainly a strange hill to die on. I think that may be why they were so determined to die on it. Emma: More for you to lay claim on. Raguel: I wish you could meet my family. Emma: There isn't one. Raguel: No. But I wish you could meet them, nonetheless. So can't we pretend?

Raguel: Was there ever someone else? Emma: Not like you to be jealous. Raguel: Not jealous. Curious. Emma: Because there was no one else for you? Raguel: I wasn't, or cannot be, very long. When I am, what I am is not to be humored. Emma: Ah... the introvert... Raguel: As opposed to the other side of that imaginary dialectic, where I imagine you're sipping a Pina Colada? Emma: I style myself more of a generalized misanthrope, agnostic to your binaries. I imagine that's quite cute by your standards, no? Raguel: Everything you do is cute to me. Emma: You might end up alone because you're condescending. Raguel: It's cold up here. That's not my fault. Emma: Did you climb up there because you were high, or because you wanted to be alone? Raguel: Both, but I appreciate your psychoanalysis. [They wander on alone in silence.] Raguel: I really did... want you to tell me about the other girls. Emma: You're bold to assume they were all girls. Raguel: I apologize. Emma: They were all girls. Raguel: Naturally. Emma: There were others, I promise, but they're.... hm. There's not enough entropy left to imagine them, anymore. Whatever they were, it's the same as everything else, now, buried completely in the dust. Raguel: I'm sorry. Emma: There's nothing to apologize for. They are always where they were, I did all that I could. I can say for my part that love was never something that came easily to me as worship, and that most other people in the world, tragically, don't have the same capacity for being worshipped you do. Raguel: It's because I'm not a person. Emma: Sometimes we were. Raguel: But there was always something else... I was your boss, or you had seen me sing once. Or I was set to decide on your life. Maybe I was the girl who the spun bottle landed on. There was always something else. Ways for us not to be people to each other, to be two links laced together in some new and confusing pattern. Emma: I think that was fun. When I was more flexible, I could be in other chains. I don't know how many of them were you. More and more, I think. Raguel: I'm sorry for eating you. Emma: Every day, my ends become more like means... Raguel: For simplifying you to that. Emma: I always wanted to be simple. It makes it harder for me to be misunderstood. Raguel: Everyone understands some part of me, I think. But they always understand wrong. Or for themselves, or in their way, or in their time. I exist as whatever shard of myself they would like to be real, and because I cannot communicate to them enough to change their mind to pry it wide, wide open, I must either be half-formed or be nothing. Emma: Oops. Raguel: No, you're special... you're my lap-dog. Emma: Something you hold, rather than something that holds you. If I don't think I can't hold you back. Raguel: That's not how I would put it. Emma: How would you put it? Raguel: It is how I would put it if I was going to. But I won't. For fear of being condescending. Emma: Maybe you're so far away from other people because you're riding on my big, furry neck. Raguel: I hope I never see anyone else. Ever again.

Raguel: Why do you think we're lesbians. Emma: The same reason protagonists have historically been men. Raguel: Assumed default? Emma: Yep. Raguel: I always thought that it was, a ship is female, I'm female. Justice is a goddess, I'm female. Emma: But not every concept is a woman. Raguel: You would be surprised. A huge number of them are. Emma: I think maybe that's that people, uh, well, people who were in charge of narratives that we pull from, in the zeitgeist, they kind of all had mommy issues. It's something about the imbalance of the soul under patriarchy, the desire for and devaluation of femininity as this impossible, elusive thing which is both evil, as in, you know, the Eve-apple thing, but also necessary, as in, the figure of the woman as the face of the nation, of society, the thing which is being protected, valorized. If you depict the spirit, the object, as a man, then it has agency, autonomy, right? So you depict it as a women, sort of... wed it to your leaders. Raguel: I have a serious question. Emma: Where's the part where you tell me that was really smart and I've been listening to you a lot and you love hearing me talk so so much. Raguel: That was really smart and I've been listening to you a lot and I love hearing you talk so so much and I have a serious question. Emma: Shoot. Raguel: Do you have mommy issues. Emma: I'm going to kill you and then myself. There will be no witnesses, no crime, and hopefully no one will even find us to eat us, meaning a little bit of light will be lost, bringing the end of everything closer than it could have been by just a remourseful smidgen. Raguel: So yes. Emma: There isn't a hole deep enough to describe how deep I'm going to bury you. There won't be anything to scream. Raguel: Stop, you're turning me on. Emma: The teeth between my teeth will catch the flesh I rend with my mouth and tear those molecules so thin that at the atomic level you will be perfectly dispersed through the environment. You will be everything. You will be nothing. You will shut the fuck up. Raguel: Do you even have a mom? Emma: .................................................................................................................. Raguel: Yuri of absence. Emma: I think this is, like my birth gender, unknowable. Raguel: Is it mommy issues to have a mother? To not have a mother? Emma: At that point, how do you not have mommy issues. Raguel: You have a loving, present mother you feel connected to. Emma: Who the fuck has that? Raguel: Emma... so many people. Emma: I am the personification of the death of the patriarch at the hands of the deviant bastard. At best she-- she was fucking complicit. She had to-- just because I don't remember her watching doesn't mean she wasn't, because I know she wasn't dead, which means she just watched. She was just one more person who watched, probably, someone who had my hair, my eyes, all these little things about her she knew would betray her, a thousand secret quirks that she hid like my dad hid, she was the one who told me to calm down, held my head down, made me put tights on, told me I wasn't going to get any better, she was the first to break it to me I could never be a girl, she broke it to me that she needed me to be one, I don't know her, or what you're talking about, at all. Raguel: I'm sorry for joking about it. It was gauche. Emma: It's gauche that I exist at all. Raguel: We can stop talking about it. Emma: The last thing she said to me. She was clearly and obviously aware I was going to make a run for it. I asked her in the car if there was anything she would do again and she said she would have a daughter. Emma: I do and don't have a sister. She did and didn't say it. It's a memory. A metaphor for a story about-- Raguel: You can be upset about something that only happened in your head. People wake up all the time from dreams that way. Emma: I was always going to grow up to destroy them, either just by existing or because I took matters into my own hands. They knew it from birth. They left me in the heather because they half-heartedly wanted to pretend they had done anything to stop it. They know. I know. We all know when something is wrong. They know. I know. A better world was coming, and they, the people who had made the old one on others' bones, could never bring themselves to divest of their ego and meet it. Raguel: That one's over, too. But was it better? Emma: Yes... Raguel: I'm very proud of you. I love you. I know it's hard. Emma: I know, I know, I know.

Emma: I'm glad you understand me. Raguel: Where is this coming from? Emma:

Emma: What are you thinking about? Raguel: The ones who died young. Emma: I suppose you don't have particular experience with that, given that you're an angel? Raguel: I've seen everyone who has ever died, die. If something has come to pass, I was there when it passed. This is a prerequisite of my job. Emma: To pass judgment. Raguel: Humans pass judgment. I am simply the means by which it is passed. Emma: The weapon? Raguel: No, the lens. Everything looks different through the eyes of justice. Particularly, a tragedy looks like a great swell of undeserved pain. Some say the part of justice is to set things right. But things can never be set right. Perhaps it is to put the pain where it is deserved. But meting out more pain can not put the pain where it was deserved-- it can only add more pain. Perhaps it is because the human spirit is one of contrapasso. When one thing happens, we demand its opposite. We see patterns so keenly that their absence feels like a knife. Emma: You're thinking about that ship again... Raguel: Dogs aren't the only thing left to die in space. Emma: I think the thing is, a dog can't consent to the risk. It can't assess the glory. The dog receives nothing besides death, and it is a death past its comprehension. That's the tragedy. Raguel: It's still a tragedy if you consented. Emma: Of a different type. Raguel: Yes... of a different type. Emma: A grief without justice. Raguel: This is another such grief. We have all consented to the laws of being angels. Emma: Dear, I don't think we have all consented. Raguel: I apologize. At least you have. Emma: You never consented to eternity, either... a rain drop does not consent to fall from the clouds. A wolf doesn't consent, upon being born, to eat meat. There is so much that is relative that I think, sometimes we forget, there are physics to these things. There are things we can not choose. And they are tragic. They happen. A flat tax on life. Raguel: Applied unevenly. Emma: The goal is a statistical, not a practical, evenness. The goal of justice, I mean. Raguel: So the spectacular will truly never have it, far as they are outside of statistics. Emma: Ah, but they get to be spectacular. Raguel: It's miserable to die in space. Emma: Depends on how you die. Raguel: It's miserable for others to know you've died in space. Emma: Then we should have never left. Raguel: You have to leave... you can't leave eternity unknown. Emma: Is that physics, or is that just a statement? Raguel: It feels like physics when you apply eternity. An osmosis. Emma: You mean diffusion. Raguel: Pardon me... I get too sentimental. Emma: Sentimentality means you're living. I think it's alright to want. Raguel: Too broad by half. Can you narrow it down? Emma: Hmmm... it's reasonable to not want to die. To want to not be killed. Raguel: Fantastic. We're back at Jesus. Emma: So many people have died for nothing.... I think it comforts people that you could die for everything... makes it feel like there was some justice, done. Raguel: If someone feels it was done. Emma: Yes. Raguel: I don't think everything comes down to us having a good feeling about it. That's, that's the meat processor. Temple Grandin. Finding a nicer way to kill it is never justice. If you think you've been saved and you haven't, you haven't been saved. Emma: But in practice, it serves as an estimation-- Raguel: I don't trust estimations. Emma: Ah... Raguel: I hate knowing that people won't even know what they lost. Emma: Well. You know. Raguel: No-one knows then. Emma: Could've been the angel of history. Raguel: And it would all be so much worse.

She makes no real attempt to come after you. The warmth on your back fades-- the melancholy of a familiar day fades-- particularity fades-- the ache fades, but does not disappear. Raguel, Angel of Justice: We will have to come back here eventually, won't we. Emma says nothing at all. Raguel doesn't push her, but she knows her kinship to strangers interferes with their mission. After all, the one thing Raguel will never be is another dog. And if Raguel knows one thing about Emma, it is that before she is her lover, she is a dog. She loves and hurts the way that dogs love and hurt, boundlessly, ceaselessly. As if to demonstrate, Emma looks back to that train stop, her ears perked. You see her nose twitch. Emma, Beast of Justice: She's the last one of us doing exactly what she's supposed to do. Raguel, Angel of Justice: We're doing the same thing we've always done. Emma, Beast of Justice: We needed to do it for someone. There's no one to do it for anymore. No world to save. No one to be avenged, even, really. She's waiting on account of faith. It's different. Raguel, Angel of Justice: Unicorn still rules. Jackpot still gambles. Gelert remains innocent. In fact, I think we're all still here because we can be what we are. Even if everything is over. And we will never be what we were supposed to be, again. Emma is still looking backwards. Raguel, Angel of Justice: We'll let her go. She nods, resolutely. You think you have calmed her, if nothing else. She puts her hand into yours, like she frequently puts her nose into your face. Then she puts her head on your shoulder. She lets you walk her away, her breath soft on your neck, on the shortest hairs there. You are still together, you hear her think. Yet in this togetherness, at the mere thought of separation, your girl has been made irreversibly sober.

The angel of determination is gone. The beast of determination is like a woman clad in dark, flowing robes, with a headscarf adorned in three flowers. Her body is a dark marble, but her nose is rubbed gold from continuous touch, and light shines off it like a star, splitting her face. She is sitting at a train stop, the way she has always been sitting at a train stop. She looks very pretty. Raguel, Angel of Justice: We don't have to do this. Come easily. Hachikō, Beast of Determination: I do not think I will. I apologize. Raguel, Angel of Justice: She's gone. Michael is long, long gone. Hachikō, Beast of Determination: We all know something about waiting. Raguel, Angel of Justice: You know she won't come back. Hachikō, Beast of Determination: She has already come back. In the rustle of rain. In the kindness of every day strangers. Emma, Beast of Justice: All of those things are gone, too, my love. It's time to go. Hachikō, Beast of Determination: These things are where Michael is... Michael is with me. Emma, Beast of Justice: (I'm guessing we won't persuade her.) Raguel, Angel of Justice: (Have we persuaded anyone else, Emma?) Emma, Beast of Justice: If we killed her. Your angel, would that compel you to fight? Would you fight for her? Hachikō, Beast of Determination: I will not raise a blade to a lie. If that is all you propose, you may as well kill me. Raguel and Emma look at each other. Raguel can clearly see the slight movement in Emma's throat-- as if it is her own throat. She can sense her the way a gunsman can sense the tremble in his own hand through a gun, through the way the unyielding metal shivers. Emma is salivating. Sometimes, when they see others, only for moments, they permit themselves to feel the full force of the hunger that would warn mortal beings they are not long to live. Raguel is almost staggered by the force of that need. Emma retreats behind it, offers her the reins. It's all up to you, love, that look says, that pull at the edge of the leash. Let me go in a direction. Commit to it. [Fight.] [Flee.] [Friend.]

The angel of death is like a pale rider with a scythe, and the beast of death is a white dog in a white cloak, with a halo of black thorns about its neck and a black sword between its hands. The name of the scythe is Farewell, and the name of the sword is Silence. The angel of death and the beast of death travel side by side. There is no change in things accompanying either of them-- long ago, they were many things, and would bring many things. At the end of the world, all that there is for the angel of death and the beast of death to bring is what already is. Death: You have come far too early. Raguel: I have made it far too long. Shepherd: There is no flock but my lord to protect from wolves. Emma: Retire, then. We'll take it from here. Death: You have brought me along your travels, and done my work. Raguel: I have done what was needed to continue. It was not with nor against my nature. Shepherd: I have seen you far afield, when a greedy farmer pays with his livestock for his folly, or when a wolf who takes a lamb has its pup taken by the eagle. Emma: Then you haven't seen me at all. Death: Shepherd: Justice can only exist where it is beholden to be so. Emma: Vengeance can only exist where it is announced. Which one do you think I am? Death:

Emma: Let's go. Raguel: You don't have to tell me twice. Emma: Let's go now. The beast has already taken off into the middle distance.

The sigh of relief they both breath is obvious. Emma leans down towards your shoulder, teeth half-bared in the lazy smile of a willfully distracted killer. Emma: No guile at all. Raguel: What's guile getting us, save for a few extra rounds of the most bitter drink on life's menu? LLewyn: Your kindness will not go unspoken for. Raguel: It needs not be spoken for. Sometimes these things are their own end. Neither of us wish to die, today.

Raguel: Let's make a pact. Dymphna: I don't know how useful you can make yourself to me.

Hachikō,

Jackpot, Angel of Luck: You passed! Congratulations!

Galileo: I have spent far far longer than is actually warranted learning when you're lying. Raguel: I don't. Galileo extends a finger of fire, momentarily so human as to give it the impression of burning alive, past Raguel, at her beast. The beast hunches up, hackles raised. Raguel looks to Emma with a few dozen sympathetic eyes, red as rubies. Raguel looks back to the fire running in front of her. Raguel: We've been friends, colleagues, lovers. Galileo: Our relationship should have broken the covenant against harming other angels. Raguel: I hate to say this. It's very gauche. Galileo strides forwards, nothing burning bright in the wake. Two arches of white rise like eyebrows. Galileo: What? Like you've hated bringing Luddites to my gates? Raguel: I barely ever got in your way. Galileo: Threatened to constantly. Raguel: We've both done terrible things. Are you going to let me finish? Galileo: From experience, it's not worth it.

Emma: Love, if we can't do this, we can't do anything. Raguel: Kill children? Emma looks with an insistence. In the black of her pupils Raguel: How many times have the pair of us failed this world.

She laughs coyly.

???, Angel of Magic: [inaudible] Hecate, Beast of Magic: Oh, sweet friend. We know what you've already done. I suppose you do sincerely intend to be the last one. Emma, Beast of Justice: (Should I.) Raguel, Angel of Justice: (Not yet.) You could not possibly have persisted without having drawn your own blood. This is not the sort of position the blameless or the naive find themselves in. You know what it requires to live in this world-- at the end of the world-- from the pure standpoint of physics. As always, to live is to consume. As long as there is consumption, there will be fairness. And as long as there is fairness, there will be justice. Hecate, Beast of Magic: As long as there are rules, there will be tricks to avert them. As long as there is a need for the impossible, there is a need for magic. Raguel, Angel of Justice: Magic cannot save the world. ???, Angel of Magic: [inaudible] Raguel, Angel of Justice: I cannot hear you any longer. Where you are going, I can not follow. The only thing I can offer you now is that we will leave this for later. Please. Understand that this is the kindest thing I can do. ???, Angel of Magic: You've given up on your better nature. She raises a hand and the guilt is like salt through a wound. She raises a hand and you are telling your mother where your sister has gone. She raises a hand and you are raising a hand to signal the heavy grass where people have just trodden. She raises a hand and you are swinging the gavel down, in a million small courts, on people who will die in a massive animal who cannot be killed without revoking your own power. She raises a hand and you are loading bullets into a gun to see who's stepped onto your land. She raises a hand and cleaves law from justice, cleaves vengeance from reparation. You know that there is no justice at the end of the world. Therefore, you can not be at the end of the world. You fall. Hecate, Beast of Magic, steps forwards and with one mouth, kisses your angel. With another, she tears her head off. The third tongue collects droplets of glimmering blood. All three heads look to you. She bares teeth and you are in bed with your lovers. She bares teeth and you could make this place beautiful. She bares teeth and you are leaving the state again. She walks over from the corpse and with a swing of her hand, your chest turns into roses, your head into a dozen rabbits. You do not last very long against magic. Hecate, Beast of Magic: Sorry, darling. She does not bind you in chains-- not as you liked, not as you hated. Your eyes roll up in your head-- both sets of eyes. You realize you will not die at the same time, and you are scared-- you are scared to exist alone. Hecate, Beast of Magic: Better luck next time.

Emma: That was no good. Raguel: Hush. Emma: I have to be the first to say it, or you won't admit it to yourself. That was no good at all. Raguel: What would you prefer? That we languish? You know as well as I do what our chances are. I take them, whenever asked to. If you don't want to, I won't keep you. Emma: Hey, hey now. I'm just keeping us honest. I never said I wanted to stop, and you'll know when I want to. Raguel: I apologize. You have to understand-- Emma: --and I do. Raguel: I never wanted to be like this. Emma: You don't get to do a lot of wanting, do you? I thought that was part of the deal they feed you angels. Raguel: ... Emma: There's nothing left of what was, I suppose. Opens up a raw old hole where wanting can take flight. Raguel: Does it bother you? Emma: Rags, I wish killing bothered me. You already know it doesn't. Raguel: You're so brutal. Emma: You've told me plenty of times... that you can't stand the beauty or the agony of it. I'm what I am. You're what you are. That doesn't absolve us, and it barely explains us, but I don't think there's anywhere to go but on. Raguel: We could lie down. Emma: For the night, or... Raguel: Mm. Emma: I don't think we will. If we were going to, we should have stopped, before-- Raguel: It was horrible, Emma. It was so horrible. Emma: I know, love. I'll do it again if we have to. If you need, I can close your ears. Raguel: I can't not know what you do. If we have to do it, I want my eyes open. Emma: Then open they stay. Raguel: Darling, promise me-- Emma: No, love. No. Raguel: You won't lose yourself in-- Emma: It's so much worse. I haven't lost anything. I just do what I do. There's no mercy in it, but there's no joy. No remourse. Just you and a knife. The end of the path. There are no witnesses. You don't have to feel guilty anymore. Raguel: Sorry. Sorry. I'm sorry. Sorry. I'm sorry. Emma: It's alright. Raguel: Sorry, sorry, sorry.

Raguel: That last vacation. I think that was when I knew it had to be the two of us. Emma: That's so much earlier than I realized it. Raguel: It was a good vacation. Emma: Oh, Raguel. No it wasn't. Raguel: It was our last vacation. With them, at least. Emma: I was gangly and seventeen and there was nothing about me to love. They were preparing to bind me with a rope of light-- they were whispering about it. My mother thought you were a good influence, and you weren't. My dad was just relieved to have me out from underfoot. Usually, I'd tag belong my older brothers, all four of them, and my two sisters would be somewhere out of the way, playing with the younger children and discussing career prospects. I would stand well out of the way and get lost in the forest while everyone else was drinking. It threatened people. Raguel: So, if I was there, at least you wouldn't go missing. Emma: It wasn't that strange. A lot of people brought their friends. Raguel: I could tell right away that it was strange, and that you weren't sure if you'd bought me there like people bought their fiances or like people bought their friends. Usually, friends came with their families, and that was out of the question. I wasn't going to embarass you. My parents made no such promises, and were keen enough to know where they weren't welcome. I spent the first day learning names I could tell you barely remembered while you snuck beer for the pair of us. I followed you, dutifully, out to the roof. Watched you stand astride the two-story cabin, out in the woods of Vermont. Emma: I wanted you to tell me not to jump. Then I realized it hadn't even occurred to you that I might. Raguel: I can't tell if I was being optimistic or if I was just too busy filing names away to pay attention. For whatever reason, you sat back down. When you flung the beer bottle towards the pine and it missed, landing hopelessly in some grass, I guessed something was up. Emma: We weren't very good at using our words yet, were we. Raguel: I thought I was. But I was also nervous, and knew I couldn't tell you that. And I wanted you to be proud of me. You were the first person to ever ask me to do anything like this... I thought as long as I could make myself useful, I might come again. I was almost more awed by the idea of you than you. Any subtlety of yours scared me, to be frank-- it felt like something too textured for me to hold without smoothing its edges out. I was scared I would interpret you the wrong way-- anything you felt, anything I wanted, like the young moon against the Earth, ripping it to pieces by proximity. I'd hurt most people I loved like that before. I was overpowering. This time, I was determined to be nothing at all. Emma: I wanted you to talk and you didn't, so I kept goading you. Raguel: So I worked harder. Emma: Yeah... you were so much better at talking to them than I was, too. They laughed at your jokes. And then, at the end of every conversation, you'd put in some good word for me. And I'd see you looking to me, and I knew you were on my team. That I was on yours. Raguel: I apologize for being such a show-off. Emma: You were perfect. Did you like my fish? Raguel: I couldn't stop staring at the hook in its mouth. It kept opening and closing its mouth, shell-shocked. Emma: Crude? Raguel: No... Emma: Don't say it. Raguel: Whenever they did leave us alone, I felt-- Emma: I wanted you alone, but you seemed so nervous. Raguel: We were out in the woods, there was one night left. Emma: I wanted to skinny-dip, you were afraid of leeches. Raguel: I think I suggested we go downstairs and watch them play pool. Emma: And then the triumphant, rebellious, Both: "They'll never love me, so I don't know why you want them to like either of us." Raguel: I'd been there all weekend. I remember the name they used for you. The few times someone made a comment, and-- they were not awfully empathetic people, and there was as much contempt as there was love for you. I noticed how scared you looked when your uncle turned his hand. Emma: But more importantly, I-- I loved those woods. They were, for so long, the price I paid to exist. But you-- Raguel: I wanted to feel like you did. Like I belonged anywhere, even somewhere I hated. I loved the way you'd rail out reams of old stories, nonchalantly. Emma: I wanted your easy grace. Raguel: Mostly, I saw it in the mouths of fish. I saw it in the centers of flowers. I saw it in the way trees bent in the wind. I wanted something from you that both of us had only recently realized we could have. I wanted to know if you felt the same way about me I did about you. Emma: I wanted it to be that first night. I wasn't sure how to ask. Raguel: It was nice. I won't make up where it was. Emma: Not inside the house, I don't think. Somewhere that smelled like pine. Raguel: I only remember how you smelled, flush with heat. Emma: That sure was a weekend. You knew from our first kiss, huh. Raguel: I-- well. I wasn't going to presume you felt similarly. Emma: Did you remember who you were sometimes? Raguel: When I was close to falling asleep. When I was running the last mile of marathons. When I looked into the eyes of people I truly hated. Then, for moments. I would remember what I was, and that I was just playing at being a person, for one of many, many times. Emma: Not that week, though. Raguel: No, not that week. That week, I was just yours. Emma: Funny... not to break your heart, but I think that was the first time I realized that I was never going to be a human, after all.

Raguel: If you had to choose. What was your favorite. Raguel: You had a brother? Emma: I've had siblings. All siblings, all places, all times. Anywhere someone is bound to be someone else's dog, I've been called. Raguel: I recognize Emma: It wasn't the one that felt the best. Raguel: What was that. Emma: I was an old dog outside a man's house. It was raining, and there was gold light streaming out from inside. That wasn't so different from every other thing. A cat came into the yard. I tore it to pieces. Raguel: Oh. Oh fuck. Okay. Emma: You've seen much worse. Raguel: Emma: The reason we're still here isn't because there's any good left to do. It's because hurting people is the last thing that can be done. Whether it makes everything better or not. Given our unending histories. As long as we're the weapon, and not an avatar that can be judged,

Raguel: What animal would you say, I am. If you had to assign me one. Emma: If this is our last conversation, love, it will be Emma: Hmm. I don't think you get to choose. I think I get to choose. But I like the idea of you being something that would find it difficult to get away. The size difference. Raguel: We do not have to get into the size difference thing tonight. Emma: Asking me for your fursona is an incredibly erotic act when you know what mine is. How do you want me to define you in relation to myself? Would you prefer I chose a predator of wolves? An equally intimidating animal? An obvious symbol? What trait of yours Raguel: How do you make me feel like I had Emma: Because, the golden rule implies you like to be tied up. Raguel: Do onto others. Emma: I own you, too. But you have a collar around my neck, and I have you, bright and pathetic, between my paws.

Emma: You get toothaches? Raguel: No teeth, no mouth. Emma: You would really think you had that. Like, specifically. Raguel: No. It's funny, I kept my eyes too. Emma: Festering sores? Raguel: Yes, they would seem to have moved out to the wings since the... sword placement changes. Emma: It's funny, I still look like a person most of the time. Raguel: When you're not a complete brute. Emma: Those are the days, aren't they? Raguel: Still following the turnings of an absent moon. Emma: I bring her with me. But the teeth... they change based on whoever meets me. What they think will hurt the worst. Emma: My teeth change. So my ability to just be a carnivore must change too, mustn't it? There are different ways you imagine me. A person. An animal. A thing outside time, a vague gesture that you wanted to know, spent all the times you were close enough to the world to be someone rather than something romancing. Bodies are too simple to contain what we are. My teeth can be whatever you want. I can eat fruit and broccoli. Raguel: No, your teeth are everything. They never change, and they draw blood at a touch. Emma: There will be no one to put me in the fossil record. Raguel: You are the last thing living thing. The fossil record exists for you to read how you became yourself. Nothing more. Emma: That's so narcissistic. It exists because they lived. Whether I read it or not, they are where they are. Raguel: That's a far more generous perspective than mine, I suppose. Emma: I think you sometimes read things in an incredibly narrow contexxt. Raguel: I'm used to having one. When I get a wider context, it's only.... snatches of things. Emma: Like the teeth. Raguel: Yes, like the teeth. I think, in one life, I was born to study you. Emma: Sounds a lot like this one, darling. Raguel: It isn't the same. This time I can talk to you. Have you never had to piece someone together from what remains? Emma: Myself, sometimes. My mother. You, before I was enough of a story to know you in the way stories know each other. Raguel: Your own pasts, then. Emma: I don't always remember my own childhood. I saw the blood and realized what the teeth had to be for. Why I was made like this.

Emma: What did your room smell like? Raguel: What a curious question. Emma: I want to remember. If there's anything we have to be most like before we die, I want it to be a version of us who had rooms. Who could go over to each other's. I want to know how we'd try to present to each other. If we'd like it. Raguel: Hmmm. Maybe mine was full of lavender, and yours was full of heather. Emma: Your cunt always smelled like pennies to me. Raguel: Just cutting straight to rifling through my things, hm. Emma: It's an interesting contrast. Lavender and pennies. You're sweet from far away. Raguel: And up-close, my breath was vanilla. I used too much lotion. Do you remember? Emma: I remember you meekly dabbing coverup on wounds of yours you didn't want me to see. I remember the chalkiness of it on my nose. It felt like you were coming off. It felt like I was eating you, and that it might stick. Raguel: I remember you leaving purple wounds, like puddles in a sidewalk. Emma: Half a base, right? Entering someone's room? I bet you had those lights strung up that made the dusky walls shine like fireflies, lit up from the inside. Raguel: So many candles my landlord would kill me. A different scent for every day. A tarot deck on top of a dozen books analyzing the times. Emma: You had this little decorative tree with all your necklaces on it. They'd glimmer in the lighting you set. When I lay next to you, I felt like the Christ child in the Nativity-- the centerpiece of some arrangement made far before my time. The way you cradled my head felt perfunctory, but I was glad I could be of use to you. Complete you in some way, when you were already so perfect. Raguel: You never found the knives I kept. A dozen of them, all decorative, rainbow-welt blades and ornate dragon designs. They were so stupid they may have changed your entire opinion of me. Emma: I didn't want to touch anything of yours. You had no such qualms. Raguel: I wanted to do something to make it up to you. Having been at yours. Having been at all. I always liked to make myself useful. Emma: Even if they're folded, the clothes are still on the ground. Raguel: I am impressed by you... the way you live... the ambivalence of it. There's nothing I can ever make myself not care about. Emma: You're tripping over yourself. You only have so much energy. Raguel: Lie down for a moment? Emma: In your bed, or mine? Raguel: Yours always felt like mine. Once I kicked my leg out and found pajama pants you'd forgotten to take out of your bed. I kept my feet there, wore them almost like socks. Emma: At yours, I got lost looking for the kitchen. One morning, you bought lavender lemonade out of the fridge. That was when you were still trying to impress me with your cohesiveness. It was too sweet, the way you'd made it, more syrup than lemonade. I never had a lemonade like that again, though. In everything I ordered, in everything I did. I was quietly looking for it everywhere.

Emma: You didn't use the scales as discs, did you? Raguel: What's all this about. Emma: Remembering how you used to fight... Raguel: Differently from now. Words have always been my main implement, the current is much less

Emma: Rags. Raguel: Yes, my love? Emma: Do you ever think about Underdog (2007) starring Jim Belushi and Peter Dinklage? Raguel: ... No.

Emma: If I could have been anything else's, I would really have liked to belong to the trains. Raguel: You would leave me for a train. Emma: No, the train's my second choice. Just to be clear. Raguel: You know the angel of trains is just a train. There's no abstraction to it. Just a train that goes on forever. The Midgard Serpent of trains. If you enter one of the cars, you'll never find your way out again. It could drop you anywhere in the entire cosmos. Emma: I know you're trying to explain to me that I couldn't have sex with her but I hope you realize that everything else you are saying makes this situation more enticing. Raguel: I know you would stick your strap directly into a furnace if asked nicely. Emma: She's going to ask nicely? Guess I'm not so interested... Raguel: Sorry to ruin it for you. Emma: You ruin everything for me. Raguel: You're a harsh mistress...

Raguel: How do you feel the most naked? Emma: Wolfskin. Raguel: It's not another mask? Emma: No, it's not a mask. It's honest. You? Raguel: When I'm small. So I suppose, whenever I'm standing next to you, and you're a wolf. Emma: Hmmmm. Raguel: It's not that it's more true, it's that I feel closer to things when they overwhelm me. Being the overwhelmer is an exercise in artifice. I have to decide what the world is, speak it into being. Emma: It takes all of my energy not to hurt people just by being around them... I like that you like me when I'm too much. I like that you want it. Raguel: Do you ever want to be killed as much as you want to kill? Emma: Sometimes. But it's not very often. I like knowing that you'd rein me in if something was really going to cause problems. I can depend on you to be whatever I'm not. Raguel: You're something I can never be. Emma: A lever. Raguel: A tooth. Emma: A fire. Raguel: That's it. Emma: You choose the container, I'll fill it until it pours over with rich red wine and blood. Raguel: I like what our bodies are when we're so close that it seems like we're one thing... you be the mouth and I'll be the eyes. You be the captured animal and I'll be the thread. Emma: You'll be justice and I'll be execution? Raguel: I hope not. Emma: You have a lot of high, fancy hopes for me. Raguel: I love you when I'm naked, exactly how you are. When there's nothing in the world but us, we're perfect. Emma: Clothed by restraint around everyone else. Raguel: You don't want to hurt anyone, do you? Emma: Not when my mouth's closed. Raguel: I wish we were good. Emma: I wish we were fucking. Raguel: One of these things is easily achievable. Emma: Then fuck philosophy, right?

Emma: Are you warm? Raguel: No. Emma: Are you cold? Raguel: No. Emma: What's the weather outside? Raguel: It isn't much of anything. Emma: It's supposed to be cold. Raguel: That's too much effort. It could be cold, and we wouldn't feel it. Emma: We can't feel warm, either. Raguel: Say you feel warm. Emma: "I feel warm." Raguel: No. You need to mean it, or it doesn't work. Emma: I feel "warm". Raguel: You're hedging now. Hedging on the meaning of the word. Emma: Now I'm thinking too hard about it, so it's definitely not going to happen. Raguel: Certainly not. Emma: Do you... miss wearing clothing? Raguel: We are wearing clothing. Emma: No, we're not naked. There's a difference. Do you remember how warm wool felt? How nice silk felt against skin? How the right outfit showed off your curves, like it was made to go over your body? Raguel: I remember everything. Emma: What would you want to wear now. Would it keep you warm, or cool? Raguel: I would be wearing my little sundress, and the shawl with the patterns on it, so that the light catches on my sihlouette. Emma: Guess that would be hard to wear now, owing to the scales. Raguel: Heavy is the cost. And you, you would be in your little bomber jacket, tough boots, and ugly jeans. Emma: Maybe I'd wear a hat. Raguel: It always cramped your ears, and my wings, to wear a hat. Emma: I could go barefoot, too, or my big hairy paws are going to be cramped as well. Raguel: Where do we travel to, and to what, my love? Emma: Once, everywhere, under many guises, and many names. Now they have all been taken away, so the answer is simple-- it was always true, but now there is no truth but it. We walk onwards, my darling, to death.

Emma: We'll never have kids. Raguel: Did you want kids? Emma: No. Raguel: Oh. We won't have them. Emma: Good, good. Raguel: Yes. Fantastic. Emma: ... Raguel: You would have been a really good dad, though. Emma: A seahorse dad? You would've made me carry? Raguel: I would have killed them otherwise. With my horrific barrenness and distaste for all life. So you would have had to carry them. And raise them. And then you would have to be away from me, so I would hate them with a hitherto untold agony. It would stunt their development. Emma: For my part, my mommy issues have made me a much more well-rounded individual. I think you're selling the mother-issue community a little short. Raguel: Speaking of short, you're stunted. Was the milk not nutritious enough? Emma: I'm going to crash out. I'm going to kill everybody. Raguel: See, you'd be a good dad. I'd make you a horrible set of parents. You, me. Our neuroses. Our petplay. Our general tendancy towards apocalypse. Not exactly a place that children can live in. Spiritually barren. Emma: But you could read them all the Terry Pratchett books... Raguel: Oh. Emma: Yeah. Raguel: What would our child look like? Just out of curiosity? Emma: They would have caramel hair, with highlights in both directions. They'd have little ham-fingers and awful crooked teeth and get pulled out of class all the time for using them with impunity with the other kids. Raguel: They would be clever, though. Emma: Our kid would be such an insuffrable little savant that no one would like them. And we could tell them that no one understood us at their age either. Raguel: We wouldn't encourage it too much. I don't want them to have no friends. Emma: Maybe our kid would be endearing, as a sort of youthful rebellion to our bitterness. Raguel: We could call her our little bug. Because she'd be loud. Emma: The cicada thing again. You're still on about cicadas. Raguel: Would the earth take her? Emma: Our daughter would be immortal... she would live in places that even we can't, now. She would live past the end of time and sail on into the old and new world, when the air in the universe's lungs collapses and expands again. She'd see how simple it all is and turn around to let us know. Raguel: We wouldn't be there. Emma: Nope. Raguel: She wouldn't know any of our families. Emma: You don't have one. Raguel: You ate yours. Emma: Best decision I've ever made. Raguel: It wasn't a decision. Emma: No. Raguel: Would we tell her? Emma: We would come up with a decent explanation for why things are the way they are. We don't have to go further than that. Raguel: Sounding... like a lot of responsibility, Emma. Emma: It's nice to have a dream, if we aren't going to make it. Raguel: We will. Emma: No, I mean... Raguel: Fair enough. But let's focus. We have a long way left to go.

Emma: Where were you at the end of the world? Raguel: Weighing the scales. Emma: Oh... I guess that makes sense. Raguel: Three old women, shouting woe. Prophesying and appearing before and remaining after endings upon endings. Fate will be the last thing to die, and a fate is a life which is bound in the seductive framings of a narrative justice. Emma: You aren't going to take over all narrative, are you? Raguel: I will admit that where I sit is a comfortable vantage point from which to see you. It lends me a fondness the role would not otherwise hold for me. Emma: Aw, babe. Don't become a sort of lexical demiurge just to speak word into being for me to experience. Raguel: It's already far too late for that. It happens to be one of my remaining joys, as I breathe. Emma: You breathe. Raguel: Not anymore. Nothing to breathe. But I have been known to respire. As a person, and in years. Emma: At the end of the world, the important one, you remember. I was the one who ate him whole. The things that had to happen happened, exactly the way everyone had already been told they were going to happen, and were working against. I got my shitty abusive family killed and then they killed me. That was pretty simple. But then the next one, they didn't have any use for me until some off-kilter twist at the end of the climax, so I spend decades fingering bean cans, sticking my muzzle in them and trying to get the last scraps of protein out from something I burst with my teeth earlier. I kept cutting my face on the metal, and I knew if it became infected, I'd probably die. My face was a hive of scars, but I lived. Then, when they needed me, I came and launched myself at the worst person standing, just to punish their insolence. I used to be their dog, of course, so there was this almost divine countenance to it. Like taking it out of my own capacity to reason put it in God's. Raguel: I was the one you ran to when it was over. You recognized me. I was excited to see you. Emma: I wasn't even thinking about you. I was thinking about how good it would feel to kill something. Then I was just excited and a normal animal again, tail wagging and baying with enthusiasm. Raguel: Afterwards, I took you home. Emma: I thought I got shot. I thought the point was still that there wasn't a place for me in a world that wasn't ending. I remember yelping when the gun went off, repeatedly, into that mangled jaw. I remember the hum of blood blotting out my last moments, making them a thin mutter of sensation. I remember finding a home there. I remember going to sleep. Raguel: This time I take you home. I bandage your wounds, slough fur from your skin. You were a person long ago, before what the war made you into. This time, you can be again. This time, you have a little more agency, a little less destiny, a little longer to reckon with it. Next time, you'll have a little more. Worn into a proper antihero by time and repetition. Emma: Everyone wants their children to be more like dogs. Raguel: Everyone wants their dogs to live as long and be as well-defined as their children. Emma: They think they want that. Raguel: You're a character, and you get to play a full and realized part. I won't settle for anything less and neither should you. Emma: I'm a talking animal. No one treats me like a person. Raguel: You are a person. Emma: I don't believe you yet.

Emma: I think the real difficulty I have is, everything is dust now. It's not even dirt. It's featureless-- would be considered soft, even-- but after a while you start desperately hoping something will hurt you. Raguel: Is that a metaphor? Emma: Don't you wish there was still something left to cut your feet? Raguel: I enjoy being unencumbered. Emma: You aren't. I'm here, and I'm essentially a free cumberance. You're never not going to be cumbered, you fucking idiot. Raguel: You give yourself a lot of credit. It's not cumberance-- which I'm going to pretend, for your sake, is correct parlance-- if it's what I want. The same way shoes aren't encumbering feet just by going on them. Emma: I'll go on you. I'll encumber your feet. Raguel: I do miss the textural landscape of information present in dirt-- there's no way to reconstruct what was from dust. Time has completely finished voiding any information from the mixture, down to the atomic level... it's all completely inert atoms and low-energy compounds floating in a sea of silver. Meanwhile, with dirt, you have the coyness of loam, the heartiness of clay, the allure of... well, you're definitely garden dirt to me. I think I'm more silt. Don't you? Emma: I silt on her thang and bounce. Raguel: I am taking that as a yes. Emma: I float in her sea of low energy compounds. Raguel: Exquisite. You entrance me. Emma: Sometimes I wonder what I would have to do to make you hate me. Raguel: Leave. Emma: Well, then I would die. Raguel: Precisely. Emma: God, you're so paternalistic. Can we lie down in the dust for a moment? The pair of them lie down. It isn't warm, and it isn't cold. Both of these things have been stripped of context, seeing as there is no energy left to warm things. To perceive it would be meaningless, so they don't. They are the only source of color, the landscape blurring into a sort of lightless, darkless haze. They lie as couples lie on fields, on beaches, at the summit of mountains, fingers linked. Emma exhales for a long time, Raguel breathes in. The pair of them look at the blank sky together. Emma: I want to roll around in dirt again,

Emma: And birch trees, those were fantastic. You had birch beer, right? Raguel: Enlighten me. How did it taste? Emma: Red soda. Raguel: You have such an interesting way of perceiving the world. Emma: You're probably a willow fan, aren't you. Raguel: You can't drink from willows. Emma: I'm just talking about trees at this point. It's a tree thing. I'm definite by now you have to remember trees. You remember them. You do. Raguel: Of course I remember trees. I enjoy the fractal patterns being at once easy to replicate by way of random generation and in reality the result of a complex web of environmental factors. When one generates a tree, they may be able to simulate a tree that would exist, but they're not simulating where the sun was, where caterpillars gnawed a leaf, where a twig snapped below the paws of a squirrel. You're left with a hollow facsimile of life. An unliving thing. Emma: You think that's really hot, don't you. Raguel: I will admit algorithms for generation of fractal figures are my favorites. I'm not so proud. Emma: I guess we're abandoning topology-- Raguel: No! I need to know if these sets can retain their properties after mutations! Emma: Eheheh... I love pretending not to understand anything you talk about~ Raguel: Want to listen to me explain buffer overflow attacks? Emma: God. What else is there to do out here. Raguel: So, we begin with the concept of the stack-- that is, the computer has a sort of list of instructions it's following, but whatever you put on first, must be taken off first--

Raguel: I think you attribute way too much to me. I was actually quite boring. A career bureaucrat every time I could find a system to attach myself to, calculating my maximum impact and divesting myself from anything risky or interesting I could possibly do because any risk felt like it impeded the precarious structures of eventual-goodness I had set up for myself to operate under. Emma: I think you're giving yourself way too little credit. I've seen you be cool. Raguel: You have to realize I don't feel good about anything about me you find 'cool'. Emma: I feel like you have to realize that's not something that makes me find you any less cool. Raguel: It's nice to know that you find violence compelling. Emma: It's nice to know that in the end... you weren't always better than me. If we overlapped, just for a moment. If you were really bad and I did really good. Then I'm not just weighing you down with the pressure of what I am. You're not making amends for me. That's even better, because I hate that I have to hear you do it. Raguel: They aren't amends. My respect for you is ardently sincere. Emma: You still have to explain me. I'm not self-evident. Raguel: The world isn't smart enough to untangle you into what I see. They aren't thinking hard enough. I am, because I've had the time. But not being recognized is different from not being. It's not your job to justify what you are, endlessly, because no one realizes what it is. It can still be seen by those intending to purposefully look. Emma: You realize you're just saying the same thing with more words. Raguel: I feel like this is much the same principle as what I said prior. Emma: That you always stand on your decisions, and you only explain them so that people can come around to your perspective? Raguel: I attempt to share it, usually in vain. I feel you like math. It's not a matter of subjective answers, you just are perfect. Every whorl of you a masterwork into the narrative murmurs of forever. I can't help but stare helplessly at it because I'm merely a lover of great art. Emma: You have to realize that's an insane thing to say to someone who once managed to smash a man's eyeballs nearly flat in his skull. To someone who has gone through the jugular like a squirrel through the power cable with teeth that weren't human anymore. Raguel: I see the sword of God fall upon the enemies of life itself and I applaud. Emma: I think potentially, conviction, especially when applied to violence, makes you a fascist. Raguel: The grain of reactionary politics exists at the center of the adulation of every poisonous dynamic. To have a will and lust for power can not always be subversive-- monsters are monsters. You forget, in my striving for absolutes, that I am merely a very different kind of monster. We are not bound to evaluate ourselves by what we would and wouldn't be as people. By if our dynamics represent a poison that would, if allowed to run in rivers through society, choke it out at its source. I don't think you are bound by oath to defend what you appreciate in fiction. Let's be made to kill. Emma: You think we can circumvent culpability by abstraction. Raguel: I think abstraction is a core component of what it means to tell a story about violence, without having done violence to everyone. I think the human appetite for fantasy must be allowed to traverse taboo, and to do so in ways that the waking mind would find odious. Emma: See, I think again, what I'm stuck on, is, that's not a self-justifying mindset. It's an assertion you've made-- Raguel: --and I like to make assertions. Emma: But you are making an assertion about absolute and not personal truth. To confirm. Again. Raguel: I'm saying that it's more compelling for me as a metanarrative entity to hold truths absolute rather than personal. Emma: Did relativism like, throw you out a window when you were younger? Are you that upset at it? Raguel: Yes. Emma: Right. Forgot. Raguel: She's a good kisser. Emma: I think the erotics of this whole thing are, easily understood by the fact we're all women, no. Raguel: The inherent triangulation of female desire due to the lack of the ability to identify with the penetrating force-- no phallus? Emma: Oh my god. And making it Freudian doesn't make it not bioessentialist! Raguel: I'm queering it. You can make your own phallus. Or choose to avoid one. It's basically in Bersani. Emma: It can't all be about Bersani, Raguel. Raguel: Can it be a little about Bersani, as a personal treat, for me. Emma: I feel like you need something else as a backbone that you're not reaching for. Raguel: You and I are having a good time. We need to kill everyone, and end the world. Why don't we start back there. Emma: It's not a bad premise... let's continue.

Emma: It comes for you, not me, doesn't it. Raguel: I don't think it can touch you. Emma: It has. It has plenty of times. Raguel: You're not... I mean, you... Emma: You're not going to come out with it, are you. Raguel: I do depend on my self-sufficiency more than you do, I believe. As much as I've attempted to lean on you, it isn't the same kind of incline. I need... to know that I'm making my decisions in the right state of mind. Emma: You're definitely not normal by anyone's standards. Nor are your decisions. I think you take a pretty illiberal view of what that means. Raguel: No, I-- there are different ways that shit can affect you, you know? It's not that I-- and I mean, I'm not scared. Emma: You're not scared of contracting psychosis? Raguel: Living close to getting a lot worse makes you feel like it's bound to happen any second. But that's-- you're closer to the fear than the thing itself. Most of the time. It's a sort of self-justifying first world neurosis half the time, and an unheeded warning sign the other half. I was saved and not saved in roughly equal measure. It just reminds me. Emma: This world's idea of justice. Raguel: The capitalist's justice. You live for that world or it kills you. Emma: I'm sorry that you watched over so much of that justice taking place. Raguel: It isn't. That's the paradox of it. Emma: Understandable. Raguel: And I waited for someone to fix the world's heart. I tried to find small places it could be mended. Emma: Was it? Raguel: No, the world's heart has not yet been mended. Emma: It's too late to save the world. This is the very end. This is the credits scene. We know how we did. Raguel: It's never too late. Emma: Categorically untrue, right? Raguel: You're taking my side. Emma: Sometimes I have to be the scary one. Raguel: You would have been the angel of the apocalypse. Emma: Sometimes endings are a kind of justice. Isn't that cathartic? Raguel: It's not fair, the way things stand right now. Someone has to do something. Someone has to pick up the blade and thrust it into the world's eye. Emma: I do my best. Raguel: Don't you wish we were the kind of people who saved people, instead of the kind of people who killed rich men? Emma: It takes all kinds. Raguel: Yes. Emma: We didn't think we could make anything more of ourselves. We couldn't talk to people anymore. We were stressed and lonely and constantly on the verge of homelessness. You were still trying to do the right thing. Sometimes you want someone with more power to do the right thing. Sometimes that's us. Sometimes we're the ones waiting for it. Sometimes we're in the street. Sometimes we're in the court. We have been everywhere. Raguel: We've been on the wrong side, too, then. Emma: What if we just said that we weren't. What if we said it: justice is the pursuit of a better world. Anyone who struck against it doesn't get to claim us. Raguel: Tell that to Christians. Emma: Fucking mess. Raguel: Yes, yes. It's a fucking mess. Emma: I like being your dog, you know. It's easy. It's only hard to watch what you have to go through and not have much agency to stop it. And you know, to die in like ten years. You always know and think, fuck, I don't know how they'll manage without me. You know. Raguel: Emma, I want to throw up.

Raguel: Emma? Emma is not present. An animal lopes besides Raguel, its dim eyes set on the horizon. Raguel: We should really make camp for the night. When Raguel stops, the wolf stops. Its muzzle is lashed by old scars, and the rivers where rope once ran are now indentations on the body. It lies on the ground with its paws out in front of it, at attention. Raguel: There isn't night. But we should stop anyways. She reaches down to touch the wolf, her fingers hesitating before insistently ruffling the scruff fur. If it notices, it doesn't show it. Its mouth opens into a yawn, revealing teeth that cohere into a predator's overbite in the front and twist into an infinitely dark, mangled cage the further back one goes, sewing the great abyss together with pillars of ivory. Raguel draws back as the animal coughs, its throat lurching, and without so much as moving to stand, a body pours out of the massive mouth, a torso of a completely blank thing with indentations for eyes in a split mouth looking at you with horror. The wolf's eyes look despondently at you. Raguel: You should put him away. It makes no response. The thing stares into her eyes, its hands reach out in a gesture imitating prayer. It shrinks about itself, curling not back into the mouth, but in on what torso it has, those indentation eyes folding over themselves to shut. It shakes with the breathing of the animal beside it, occasionally violently jolting its head back and forth. Raguel: I can wait if it's agonizing, but I don't know if... you want me to... I can't hear you at all when you're like this. So I figure, it's not safe to assume. But you've said I should wait. The wolf's breathing grows more labored, the thing's thrashing only intensifying. Its fists pummel the textureless ground, and it moans and writhes with anger and pain. A human sobbing howls from deep in its body, and when it has exhausted itself it lies, a blowfly on a corpse, near motionless on the ground. You both lie like that for a long time. Slowly, the body recedes, shrinking snailike back into the mouth, although the wolf does occasionally cough rough spats of bile. God does not agree with her. It does not go down easy. She was not made to survive killing it, only to kill it. Her desperate shelter-dog eyes bore into yours. For the first time in a while, you pull the sword clean, blood pouring down your face. You extend it high over her head, so that its shadow falls heavy on you both, lit from nowhere. The whites of her eyes are visible-- that human canniness momentarily returned to her expression. Raguel: I'll ask you later. You will not ask her later. Raguel: I can't do this for us when we're not in the right state of mind to decide that it's what we want. It is the only time you could possibly do it. She has to be in extreme pain to be willing to let you die.

Raguel: You're not supposed to let him out. Emma: Oh, I'm sorry. I was under the impression-- apparently mistakenly-- that we were in a life or death situation, not discussing things to try out in the bedroom. Raguel: Emma, we have rules. And one of those rules involved-- if it comes to that, I could always-- She lowers her head enough to finger the hilt. Emma: Don't pull the sword out. Raguel: I was simply trying to illustrate-- Emma: What? That we could both still kill ourselves? Raguel: Precisely. Emma: ... Raguel: ... Emma: You have a lot of fucking nerve, you know that. Raguel: I know you get angry when he's close to your mouth, but-- Emma: I'm sorry, who had to kill her? Raguel: I do whatever I can within the laws, Emma. I don't want you to have to shoulder this alone, but there are things we angels cannot-- Emma: I don't want you to tell me how to do my job. I'm supposed to protect you. The only thing you're supposed to do is look away. Raguel: Emma. Look away from them. Not you. You were never involved in that part of the deal. Emma: Did you just think I was going to effortlessly slaughter every thing left in the world? That I wouldn't have to play dirty? Raguel: Yes, Emma, I did assess your capabilities would be... Emma: We won't kill her before she kills us. Raguel: I trailed off. Emma: Do you want to meet her in person and shake her hand? Is that what this is? Raguel: I suppose I. I could stand to shake her hand. Don't you at least wonder what she'll look like? Emma: No, because she'll cater it to us, the way she does to everybody. It means nothing. She looks like nothing. She's a solipsist's last quick wank before the autoerotic asphyxiation blanks their horny little circuits. She's not a prize. Everyone sees her, Raguel. Everyone gets to death. She heaves, and you see his fingers in the vomit, like a rope tied to a rock in the middle of a fast-running river. She smears the remains across her face, barely noticing that she's only worsened the odor. Raguel: This isn't a glory mission for me. It's just something to look forwards to. Emma: I wasn't even a good idea. Why couldn't you just let me die? Raguel: Because I love you. And I'm very selfish. And because I believe there's no better weapon in the world than you. That there never has been, in all of history. Emma: He's what makes me a good weapon, Raguel. You can't have fratricide without the dead brother. She's silent because she knows there's nothing that she can possibly say to counter this. She knows, deep down, that there's a reason that they don't share one body, but that Emma and her brother do. She knows her brother's myriad connotations curl up inside her like a baby, like a hibernating animal, like a parasite, like a black hole. Emma: I can never love you the way I love him. Not enough to kill you. Raguel: Do you want to stop? The slow, steady motion of bodies rocking against each other. The movement of gravity tugging planets into supermova. The scraping of flesh from bone. Emma: No. But you have to let it hang out sometimes. Raguel: Okay. Then, if it comes down to it-- Emma: I-- Fuck you. Sure. Boundaries are easy to set. They're just difficult to maintain.

Emma: Do you like your name. Raguel: I like the things you say about my name. "Ragu" and "Rags" and such. Emma: Oh. Hm. Did you get it at birth? Raguel: Conception. Emma: I changed mine. Raguel: How many times? Emma: Don't know. Raguel: Do you like it? Emma: It's short for 'emnity'. Raguel: So we're both concepts. Emma: I chose my name, though. You didn't. So I wasn't assigned a concept, I affiliated with it. Raguel: How foolish of me. What a brilliant insight. Emma: Sometimes you miss things. But I feel you're missing them so I can say them. Raguel: Unkind of you to presuppose my motivations. Emma: Have you ever considered changing yours? Raguel: No. I've already grown far less precise than I ever wanted to be. To add a name, especially one with no clear reference, to the mix, would I think send me into a fit of hysterics. Emma: You angels are so dainty for things who make the world work. Raguel: The fickleness is part of the point, I believe. Emma: I feel like deployment should make you robust, no? Raguel: It's made me feel like nothing at all. If you can be used for everything, do you stand for anything? Emma: Maybe that's more of a you problem than most other concepts. Do you think any of them don't have as much of a problem? Raguel: Royalty, perhaps, she's never had much of a problem asserting herself... trial... death. Emma: That's a short list. Raguel: Many of us were particular. Most of us who were particular were dead. When environments die, the generalists are usually the last to go. What can I say? I am a rat, clinging onto the stomach of a system that's already died. Waiting for its rot to catch up to me. Emma: I think it's catching fast, now. If you're a rat, what does that make me? A flea on your back? Raguel: You're a dog in any life, Emma. I think you know that well enough. Emma: You put too much stock in me and what you presuppose I am. I'm not half as noble as you think. Raguel: I've seen some mangy dogs, Emma. Emma: A mangy dog is still a dog. Raguel: Who's a concept, now? Emma: All angels have dogs. Raguel: Why do you think that is? Emma: Because you need something to define yourself by. Concepts exist in context. I'm your context. Raguel: You make me seem... a much prettier thing than I am. Just by looking at me the right way in the light. Do you understand? Emma: Yeah, yeah. Give me a kiss, darling. She kisses her, but it's with hesitance. She looks at her for a while through a dozen faceted eyes, each of them laced with the sort of sadness that begs asking after. Emma tilts her mouth up slightly, not quite a pout and not quite annoyance. She looks back into as many eyes as she dares, and knocks her ears closer to Raguel's face. Fur brushes against feathers. She can tell that the angel is warmed by this, feels her breath shudder against her, more real than it deserves to be. The two of them hold each other's heads in their hands. For a while, no words are exchanged at all. The things that they previously needed to define themselves feel like moot points, bobbles, accessories. This, the smell of each other, once carried by ambient particles, now carried by nothing at all, this is real, as real as anything still can be. Their mouths water-- their lips touch, soft and rough against each other, familiar, they drink each other in by noses, tongues, hands. Emma's hands grip Raguel's back, Raguel's hands run again and again against Emma's cheeks and shoulders, rubbing coarse hair and short fur the wrong way, dragging long fingers through it. They know each other better than anyone has ever known anyone, feel each other through the other's body, like a stone knows a lake it's thrown into by the ripples it causes. An eternity passes. No time passes at all. Object and reference recognize each other. They pull away, stare for a while, thinking that five senses are not enough. But they had to invent half-human bodies for what they will have to do next. After all, it's not each other they need names for. It's the world. Now, almost no one is left to say them, and even still. Even with the things they have finally, properly made of themselves, they still shiver, hearing someone else call them.

Raguel: I've decided to acquiesce and be from the mountains. Emma: You're not from the ocean? Raguel: Too played out. I want to be from somewhere close to the sky. Rural but with a city down at its base. I want to take you back home and show you blue peaks older than sharks, stretching out for endless miles, an old scar on the weathered body of the country still crumbling back down from a raised line of skin. Emma: I see. I guess mountains are romantic for their own reasons. I wanted to be from the mountains, but I'm from flatlands. Maybe they're nearby. Raguel: Nowhere nearby has enough heather. I think you're further away than you think. Emma: It's like the apple in the garden of Eden is a fruit. It's a translation, choosing another fruit adds flavor to the interpretation. Shifts the connotations and setting around it, but doesn't necessarily make it less true. Raguel: I think it's fun when you budge on particularity, but if you want to stay where you are, you shouldn't do it too much. It adds up quickly. It'll hurt you. Emma: It wouldn't be the first thing to wound me about living and having not lived. It wouldn't be the first thing I renegotiated, either. That we decided was a metaphor, or a mixed message, or is and isn't true depending on interpretation. Whatever animal I am keeps that in the balance. Raguel: Being an animal at all keeps you contingent on the flesh. Keeps you honest. Emma: I don't think that's completely true. But I also think you want things more than you let on for completely aesthetic reasons, and those aesthetic reasons become their own betrayal towards the preeminence of meat. It's the battle between hedonism and... well, something. Raguel: I don't think you can paint well without hedonism in the toolkit. To completely abandon material pleasure or gratification dries out the work. Even with perverse and highly present aesthetic sensations. They carry the reek of their own intensity, and the intensity itself is hedonist. Emma: So you think, the extremism entitles you-- Raguel: To be read. Or to be easily understood as something that can be read, and I'm supposing a reading. That reading is, the mountains. I take of its connotation and step into a life there I never had. Because I don't really live anywhere, I get to choose. Because I cannot really be material, I find places to be particular about. The holy spirit has places where it clumps like old milk, turns in on itself. Becomes an overwhelming force. Emma: I think you have to just admit you like something. It's a character particularity. You're a take. That take connects to takes. Raguel: The burden of being personified is egregious, but when I sleep in my childhood bedroom, I can hear the howl of a train as it rolls behind our neighborhoods. Emma: Fucking... yes, the train. Raguel: I bet the train passes by your childhood bedroom too, before we even know each other, this time. When we're older, we recast all our memories so that we were always there, like childhood friends, because there is nothing we can't see each other in. And one of those things is, you passing the train to me, in the mountain. Me passing it back. The two of us as landscapes curled around each other, with iron holding us in place, wrapped around our arms wrapped around our bodies. Emma: That one was a lovely life. I liked coming to your home-- imagining I had always been there, especially after you inherited it (they didn't have much of a choise in the matter) and you no longer had to slink about the place, pretending everything was a part of the plan that seemed to have been posted on every door of your house. When your future was yours, the thing that had to perform its getting-there an empty husk holding onto a tree with its serrated legs, you gave it to me, just to see if you could even piece together how it was supposed to feel. I didn't really understand you well enough to help, I just knew there was somewhere in the topography that if I sat, everything would form a perfect vista, somehow more complete in your eyes than one without me. I loved you because I had never imagined being any small section of anything so lovely. Raguel: And we saw coyotes on the trail cams outside our house, which used to be for hunting deer. Emma: And I fell half a mile down a steep slope punch-drunk one fall, and had to climb all the way up, and you realized that I was more of a mouthful than you'd bargained for and that you might not have saved me all the way from dragging and dropping me into your life. Raguel: And we set huge fires in the firepit, and you bought logs in you'd chopped yourself and prodded the first sparks with sticks from the yard and newspaper. I never told you what I burned before I got here, how manic I'd really been before being viewed forced me not to become a complete lunatic. That was the plan when I was younger. I was going to die in a fashion so spectacular that nothing associated with me would grace the face of the earth. I was going to retroactively make my family and my friends and my town all feel guilty. Then I put off dying, for sex, and then marriage. Emma: I like how few questions you asked. The amount you talk helps with that. Raguel: Can we go back to the part where you laud my storytelling skills? Emma: It keeps the nights warm. So does James Herriot in hardback and on PBS, and slightly old-smelling couches and scratchy wool blankets. Raguel: Is it alright if I lie awake some nights, holding you, listening to the train? Emma: Only if it's alright I slink out of bed to get raw ham from the kitchen and lock eyes with a fox every few weeks, and watch him disappear into the darkness. Raguel: Then it's settled. Emma: I think you've won me over, yeah.

Emma: What are you attracted to? Raguel: The laquer around your eyes that makes them look doglike. The scruff of your dusty hair matching the few stray hairs you haven't bothered to pluck around your chin. The hunch of your heavy shoulders. Your stomach and your happy trail ascending to bring grass between the valley of your breasts. Your pale mauve nipples. The way your legs fasten together when you're lying down. Your ass. Emma: You don't have a more general type than me, I'm guessing. Raguel: If it perks your envy, be assured I have invented a thousand concentric definitions of beauty to analyze you under a microscope. There is no test you have not passed with flying colors. My heart soars at the very thought of sighting you. Emma: How sexy and mildly patronizing. Raguel: I forgot to mention your big toothy smile. Emma: Do I get to reply? Raguel: Go on. I'm more vain than you give me credit for. Emma: I like your aquiline nose. Also the way you glare at me when I've said something stupid that you technically can't counter without incriminating yourself. I like your freckles, even though they're pale. I like that we match in that small way. I like the way your wings flare when you feel threatened or flustered. I like the dark gleam of your sword, and the heavy whirl of your scales when the time comes to go to war. I like the determined set of your expression. I love the way your voice hums like background radiation. I like that you're warm in the way a beam of sunlight is warm, that you're always mildly incandescent. I like that you're never content to be entirely real. It makes me feel like you're being honest with me, and someone has to. Raguel: Very charmed. Emma: I'm certain. Raguel: I couldn't feel anything so physical for anyone until I was interested enough in you to become a person. Before you were a set of equally interesting narrative hills. Emma: Woof. Sorry about that one. Raguel: I don't regret it. Emma: No... I've loved a lot of beautiful women. Raguel: In a way, I was there on every battlefield. Emma: Gross. Let me have something, won't you? Raguel: I wouldn't dare lessen things. I pardon my metaphysical intrusion. Emma: Alright, holy spirit. Soldier on.

Raguel: Do you even like dogs? Emma: I am a dog. Raguel: Do you even like dogs? Emma: We're killing dogs. Raguel: I feel like you're being obtuse to obfuscate the very reasonable terms I'm laying out here. Please answer my questions candidly. Emma: Candid sounding a lot like canid these days. Raguel: I think there's almost nothing canid about you. You're highly preposterous. Emma: The beginning before the end. A dog chasing its tail. I think there's nothing more canine than loving something which doesn't love you the same way. You can't love me the way I love you, so, regardless of the level of devotion on both times, there's that sexy asymmetry to it. That's what gives us our white woman energy. Raguel: You are killing me here. Emma: I think from a purely aesthetic standpoint, as you like to say. There's a lot to like about dogs. They're furry. Expressive. Brutally obvious. Both easy to train and impossible to completely control. They move through the worlds we create, but they aren't born to them. Our mutual inability to understand is a constant font of mirth rather than an innate source of conflict. We almost want-- we let ourselves want-- difference. To sympathize with something completely other. Raguel: But the basis of that sympathy is rooted in the fact that dogs rarely-- or when they do so, do so at the behest of other 'bad' owners-- threaten us. The loyalty of dogs, their raw adoration, is the sticky surface to which our desire to understand an other adheres. You can see it doesn't go so well when there's even the slightest hint of ambivalence in the relation. I think, unfortunately, dear Emma, dogs display humanity's brutal desire to subjugate and possess, as much as any ability to empathize and care. Emma: I think dogs want that, too. I don't think it's that easy. Raguel: Are you easy? Emma: I'm simple. And I love what I love. Raguel: Women? Emma: Huge boobs, man. Raguel: Meat? Emma: I reiterate. Raguel: You're a brute. Emma: I'm your dog. Admittedly, the imagery of collars... look, you're only here because someone suggested they put a leash on me. Raguel: How will we interpret that? Am I your parole officer, now? Emma: God, are you into rehabilitation or not? It's hard to tell. Raguel: I think I'm skeptical of the logics we're rehabilitating into. And with us, the pair of us, in particular, there's the issue of it being more like a domestication. You and I, we're a little fucked up. We own and are owned by each other. We want to kill and be killed. We're hoping the other tears us apart, but we need a pretense-- you make a shape that goads me. I tug the leash too hard. Emma: I mean, I like the way the language translates. But I also do like dogs, I guess. I liked seeing dogs lie about. I liked the funny way they exhale. I liked their enthusiasm and kindness. I liked their big fluffy tails and the way they trot around neighborhoods, claws clicking against rivers of black asphault. I probably owned a few dogs. Big, hefty shelter huskies. I bet my house smelled like dog. Hair of dog, when not dog. Raguel: You don't meet a lot of canine alcoholics. Emma: When someone decides what you eat, they have to fuck up for you to fuck up. Raguel: Have I fucked you up? Emma: The last person we ate tasted a little bit like starlight and snow. Raguel: I'll take that as a yes. Emma: I'm not here to argue, you know. I'm just here to dog my job. Raguel: Freudian? Emma: Dog as a verb. Raguel: Mmmm... we'll workshop it. My curiosity's sated, at least. Emma: Oh, no it isn't. Raguel: No it isn't. You keep me honest.

Emma: I hope you were watching when I wasn't a person. Raguel: It wasn't as exciting. But I did watch. Emma: Wasn't as exciting. It's basally exciting. It's fundamentals. There's a reason you kill the dog to make people cry. Raguel: Emma, I hate to say this, but I fancy myself a fair cut above all the other angels. And you must understand that all of them are depending on tearjerk reactions like that to get a rise out of conceptual buy-in. There's dear Laika, launched into space. There's poor reproached LLewyn, killed in perfect innocence for protecting a child. There's miserable Laelops, set to run forever by a hunter who has forgotten their hound as anything more than a trifling thought experiment. I imagine at some point we'll meet one of the vast arrays of dogs sitting for their owners that so often accompany angels, their brass, sculpted noses rubbed gold by pitying passers-by. I liked you because you are so obviously, a demon in your own work. I liked you most as a human because there are so many more ways for a human to be a demon to others, and evaluating what they're at fault at is such a complicated transaction. Emma: Ah, I see. People think I'm your personal executioner, but I'm the one standing trial. That's the joke. Raguel: Admittedly the idea ruffles my feathers somewhat. Emma: Tsch... it's certainly an interesting way to put your affiliation at odds with itself. Raguel: It's impossible to be anything good. Emma: I think you just refuse adamantly to be anything good because you can't help but interrogate that goodness, and within it find some new, bespoke evilness that you have to shelter yourself from, which just makes the entire thing into a hedge maze of stupid convoluted bullshit you've erected to keep yourself from having principles that are defined past 'I really like my girlfriend and I think she was right about everything'. Raguel: It's impossible for me to want solely to be in a manner that doesn't beg investigation. Emma: Ontological pick-me syndrome. Raguel: I think you're just being sexist now. Emma: It might just be sexist to ontologically camp yourself. Raguel: Is this where we go into the paradox of sarcasm. Emma: And come out on the other side with, there is no sarcasm. It's the threat of the thing itself that holds the red-hot core of the appeal. It's taboo again. Obviously. Raguel: I think action and intention are supposed to be the subverting force. Not the thing itself. Emma: There's a little smoke and mirrors going on. A little hanky-panky. Raguel: You can't accuse me of hanky-panky. It's untoward. Emma: Untoward these. Raguel: Lock her up. Emma: I would love to see you try to lock me down. They fuck.

Raguel: Emma? Emma is across some distant plane of time. You see her, and for a moment, you are there too-- in a place that still has leaf litter, beneath trees that still sag and sway with the interminable process of entropy. Her eyes meet yours, two dark adders in the foliage. She is no different from every other living thing, in that she will sag and sway and waste. She looks at you with the fear of something living. You kneel, but can not sit down. Something in the leaves will not touch you the way they touch her. Sometimes in living rejects you, but not her. You are reminded that the pair of you may be in the same place, but you have crossed from different sides of the river. You are a thought that dreams of flesh, and she is flesh that someone has tied into a vessel for thought. You wonder if she can see you-- wonder at your ability to wonder at her, when usually your hearts are so close together as to render dialogue a thought exercise. You press your hands to her face and as her eyelashes close, buffeted by dust, you recognize that to her, at present, you feel like a beam of sunlight. Raguel: Emma, can you hear me? Her lips open, sliced where she bites them compulsively. Her nose wrinkles slightly, her skin straining around the acne she's picked into ruby fortresses of scab, lacing her face in a minefield of texture. Emma: They're selling this house, you know. Always. They're always selling this house. You look up. It seems so obvious to you now-- the trail out to this particular stretch, the distant house leaning on its stilts to get a good view of the surrounding mountain. The contour of the landscape, the ease with which it incentivizes running downhill. A wonderful place to skate, and break your legs in with homemade kneeguards. A whole kingdom to forage fungi-laden sticks to poke your wretched brothers with. Emma: He and I, we were good-- we were good back then. He and I, and him, and all the other boys-- sometimes the same boys, sometimes different boys. I wish I could even pick him out in a crowd, but I can't. But we were kids, normal kids, back then. And we were good. Raguel: Do you think he could pick you out in a crowd? Emma: Hm-- I hope not. I hope sometimes that he'll become whatever I am, and we'll meet each other as next to total strangers. It'll feel like touching shoulders with someone on a bus, and them forgetting to move away. You are leaning into her sunshine, casting a half-mask across her face. You lean away. Emma: They're selling the house. You can't do anything about that, when you're a kid, you know. You can just be indignant on the place's behalf. Raguel: Do you remember why? Emma goes quiet for a long time. Emma: Bear trap in the back of the property... blood never came off it. Raguel: It was after the incident, then. Emma: There was a moment between when I did it and when everyone found out, when I couldn't go back, but no one knew. There was still time to lie. There was still time to pretend to be a person. Raguel: Emma, no one was still pretending you were a person. You know why you were out there. Emma: A bear trap seems. A little silly. Raguel: Sillier than leaving a dog tied to a post and hoping it dies? Emma: It makes more sense for me to be a person. Than a dog. I think. I hope. I hope I was really like family to them. I hope I wasn't just something they owned. Her voice tenses with frustration. Recently she'll reach the point where she has to start defending why she appears as a human being in her own memories. She'll look to you out of those haunted eyes, always set in the wrong things. An inherent chimericism by resemblance, something just too uncanny to have formed by coincidence. It's like someone took her family-- plus dog. Or the family she remembers having. Sometimes in her dreams she stuffs her tail in her pants and tucks it around her legs, sometimes she wakes up with ears and shoves them under a beanie. The egress is always the same, whether she was born a human or made herself into one-- she was on their side. One day she woke up and was not, anymore. They realize that they can not make her behave. They try to get rid of her. She does not go quietly. The whistle of ambulances is the refrain of the big closer before the intermission. What's the point of living infinite lives, if they go the same way? What defines a retelling of the same story? You are the reader. You are obligated to make a decision. When you do, it will define what version of her exists until the end of time. Capture her in your head now. Choose very, very carefully. Tell me if you come up with a better way to describe what a teenage girl did when pushed into a corner than what we've done here with the bear trap.

Raguel is several concentric rings of brightness playing at the business of detail. Raguel is an attempt to line a photo up right to get the right shot-- the intuitions that let you know what the "right" shot is, a cohesive idea of beauty cohering from a thousand different constructs, disdainfully reading itself, revising itself, pretending not to insist on its own existence. Here are some things other people have seen Raguel in: -a crocheted doiley with not a single stitch out of line -an aloe plant -various pieces of avant garde metal sculpture outside of the doors of buildings of some importance -the flash of the translucent fur of the polar bear as light catches and refracts through it -a michorryzal network providing resources and information for a large forest of old and quarrelsome trees, gossips all -the distinct pain felt when forgetting to watch one's step while in deep focus, and affixing one's head to an overhang or pole as a consequence -the empty stare of a television screen -a face found in an oil spill -gloves -the angels on the head of the pin, better known as the computer chip -the scent of wood in an old building -light streaming through a window in a library Here are some things Raguel has come to assign herself: -the smell of heather -the scent of old pennies when run repeatedly between the thumb and index finger -the mints served at a doctor's office -the shape of good argumentation, as later analyzed -the serendipitous shape of infinite, self-containing fractals -one-day old snow, good for packing -a car warming in the parking lot during the dead of winter, with fogged windows -the sheen along one side of a new metal baseball bat -the topography of a local farmer's market -the experience of breaking teeth on ice cubes She is still working on perceiving and being perceived, and is often at least mildly uncomfortable when she realizes information is being leached from her person. Emma keeps telling her, this is the point, this is the work. Now, she has become the last reminder of all these things-- she thinks selfishly that they might be reconstructable from her person, that the black hole of time can not swallow them if she remembers them, embodies them, correctly. She thinks she can be a thousand small gods and a large one. She does not have enough readers for them to collectively pull connotations from her like feathers. She just has Emma, who is remembering her remembering herself, the pair of them a set of rusty mirrors set against each other. More of an effect than a faithful rendition of an image. More of a desire to desire than the desired thing itself. These sorts of contradictions were interesting to her, once. Now that there is no real thing to juxtapose her with, all her meta-canonicity feels like a coy trick. Raguel wants to render correctly very very badly. She looks almost like a person today, a person you could see anywhere. The eyes, though, there are hundreds of them, a smear across and past the face. The light, it doesn't reflect on her body correctly, as if the light in her comes from a dozen different places, none of which are communicating.

Emma: If there was somewhere to return, when we're done, where would you go? Raguel: To our little cabin on the hill, of course. The one surrounded by hydrangea. Emma: If not for me, then where would you go? Raguel: You are a real spoilsport. Emma: Where would I find you in another life. If we were going to start all over again. Raguel: A laboratory hidden in the lower intestine of your city. They have found an angel and they are going to kill it to use its body's natural radiation to power the city forever. I am being Emma: What is your fucking problem.

There is no fleeing from the passage of time. [[Fight.|Angel 0: Fight Success]]

It is long past the time you would find kindness in the shadow of the cross. [[Fight.|Angel 0: Fight Success]]