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The first dyes the royals used, indigo and purple dyes, came from mollusks. But since a mollusk is [he holds up two fingers, barely apart] tiny, they had to fish millions of them to put out anything to sell. The whole city reeked of rotting sea food...that's on historical record. I mean every city then--well hygiene wasn't like it is now, every city was coated in waste. Worse than now. So for them to point out Tyre and say that city reeked...?

[He has a point. He's getting to it. Slowly.] We don't have a chance to fish much here, so I'll have to get creative. [He has a pile of objects in one corner, which is sometimes visible , especially when he pauses to light a cigarette]

Harvey, I've got the fish. They seem happier.

I need deeply colored objects--scraps, trash, whatever--but I can't... [a wan smile] It's not something I can figure out. Can't tell which of these is blue. [Which is a hint at a certain someone.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Please do.

[Prior to coming here he'd broken it off with his latest girlfriend, due mostly to her being on drugs; but there's also always been detachment for him, an inability to be understood by the women he was curious about. Frankly it's impossible to be detached or disinterested about Bleu, and so he's more agreeable with her, with contact with her, than he would have been with anyone normally.]

You know, colors are probably the only thing that all men--women, too, I won't be prejudiced--can have common ground on.

Are you sure about that? Can you be sure that the "green" someone sees is the same another person does?

[She smiles anyway though, happy to help out, and points to the first set of color.] Speaking of, this is green, or green as I see it. Whereas this one is impressively grey, like an overcast sky or a Scottish landscape--you know, two ways of saying the same thing.

[He smiles, amused that the color she describes to him is the one he sees anyway.]

That's true. They might not. But every society puts meaning to colors--red for war, or peace; and everyone has a fascination with an especially vivid sunset.

Where in the world would you find a color like this one? [Pointing to the one nearest him]

Different societies view colors different ways, but no one can escape the sunset. What does it look like when you see it?

In marigolds and in the sunlight glinting off windows in late afternoon.

[He tips his head back a bit, as if it might help him recall a sunset; it's been so long since he has been off the Barge and been able to see one.]

It looks like...like if you took a branch and burned the tip, and dragged it in a line so long it faded from black to white. Every shade in between, up there on display. But what it's really like is the feeling; everyone kind of stops, and you can see it in their face, the world falling away for them for just a few seconds. Sunset is when the world holds its breath--the people who are aware enough to see it.

[She could point out, of course, that a distinctive part of that process is the burning ember, the dull reddish-orange glow somehow reminiscent of an iron ready for a blacksmith to shape. But he knows that, and to point it out would be excessively unhelpful.]

And what do you do when the world holds its breath?

Part of you wonders if it will ever start breathing again. But you know, when you can't breathe, all you do is feel--feel your blood in your veins, your ribs trying to move. You're the most aware of yourself that you can be in a day.

[Bleu likes the way he talks about it; poetry is art without color or shape. She smiles, a madonna/whore smile, the meaning changing depending on the light just as a color does. But in every light, it's genuine.]

Do you feel anything else?

[That smile is so perfectly blue--not a color but the essence of what it means--that for a moment he simply stares at her, forgetting the question entirely. It's sheer luck that when he speaks it's sort of in line with what she'd wanted to know.]

It's like when you're floating in the dead center of the ocean, where under you it's all dark, and over you it's all light. You're at peace and you know at any moment the water might take your life.

[That kind of response is the type an artist gives her when recognizing her as a muse, sensing the force behind her appearance. It delights her to her very core, it pleasantly surprises her that her influence can extend beyond color, and it relieves her that she can still inspire without a supply of the Sacré Bleu.

And he can see it.]

You're not afraid of being swept under the swells?

[He shakes his head, smiling--beaming, almost--as if just the thought exhilarates him.]

I killed myself back home, trying to get to a river. I thought I'd be mortally wounded by the time I reached the water, and the rapids downstream would take care of the rest.

Now that I'm here I realize I would have loved to feel the rapids without a bullet in my back.

[And that, of course, is what this feels like: a resolution the mistake, finally having a glimpse of something he's mourned his whole short life.]

[His smile is so true, so welcome, and so sweet that Bleu settles down beside him, lightly trailing her hand over his upper arm.]

You drowned? [She leans in, her lips close to his ear, breath hot against his skin.] Then I'm sorry you couldn't die peacefully. Why not give yourself to that without the bullet?

[She hesitates before pressing her lips to the little dip where his ear meets his cheek and to drag her lips down his jaw. She finishes by kissing the corner of his mouth and pulling away bashfully, willing an indigo blush to her face.]

I'm sorry. I don't even know your name.

I bled out before I could get there. [She is not the first to show interest in him; but she is the first that he's paying attention to, not as if he's dissecting her actions, but as if he can actually understand them.

The trouble with his name, it's a problem that has to come up in every new meeting. He turns his head and kisses her, whisper soft, lingering because his vision may be greyscale and his hearing may be all but gone, but he can still taste, and he can still feel.]

You're Bleu. You would be even if everyone started calling you 'Jane'. I never found out what I really am. They call me Piper here. Pied Piper--you know the story?

[She brushes her hand over his other cheek, laying a real -- a pure -- kiss on his lips, brief and chaste but no less substantial.] For your sake, I wish you hadn't. Water is... it's better than blood.

[She chuckles briefly, drawing back with almost inhuman grace. In that moment she looks like a painting; she looks like every painting.] Bleu is the realest name I have. And Piper is yours?

Of course. He lured the Hamlin rats away before doing the same with the children.

[He smiles, watching her, lighting another cigarette. He's always done his best thinking on a motorcycle, or with a cigarette to toy with.]

I have a hard time believing in names. At least in mine. A name should have some truth and mine never did. It was more like a nail, trying to keep me in place.

Piper fit at home; I led people to do things. I'm more- sedate here. ...Or I was. [He smiles to himself, savoring the sensation of feeling alive. Really feeling it, being aware of it; how many moments like this does a person get in their lifetime? Two, if they're lucky?]

You can call me anything.

[She glances at his cigarette, watching as he lights it. Women in her era who deign to smoke are considered trashy and showy, but in a man it can be quite classy.

She reaches for it.] May I try?

And what things did you lead them to do? [There's no judgment or concern in her voice, just casual interest, inviting him to tell a story.]

[He nods, and hands it to her. Sharing a smoke is never a bad thing, in his book--even if it does cause cancer and a host of other complications that he's aware of.

The tone of her voice carries just enough that, even though he misses the last half of her question due to his ears going dead, he tells her the truth.]

I led them to gang warfare, mostly. I made them believe that fighting over intersections and sticky alleyways was noble... I made them think we were like Arthur and his Knights, that we were Crusaders, except instead of ramming ideals into a distant culture, we killed each other for the fun of it. Cowboys and Indians crap, same thing you'd find on a playground, except I armed them with switchblades and lead pipes.

[She holds it the way he does, easily and accustomed, although it is a new experience for her. When she takes a drag she holds her breath for a second, forcing herself not to cough, before exhaling the smoke.] How do you do this?

[She meets his eyes as he talks, nodding occasionally, and as he finishes she reaches for his hand, intending to weave their fingers together.]

The Crusaders killed for the fun of it, Piper. So did knights. Cowboys, Indians, children; they all do it. It's nature. Stupid and natural, as so many things are.

How, or why? [He doesn't look down when her hand touches his, but instead just takes it, fingers laced between hers, as natural as anything.]

It is. I think if my instincts weren't so far removed, I'd have been very happy, leading my "men" from gutter to gutter.

Have you ever heard of a war that went the way the soldiers dreamed it would?

How. I'll find out the why on my own. [She likes that easy intimacy, strokes the back of his hand with her thumb.]

Nothing ever goes the way anyone dreams it will.

You draw it in slow, let it fill your lungs...if I go long enough between smokes, I can feel my heartbeat change with the first drag.

[He draws on the cigarette to show her, blows it out toward the leafy canopy.]

Does that mean you've never seen a dream fulfilled? Not even close? [From another person it would seem like a leading question perhaps, but from him it's almost the same curiosity of a historian.]

This is a skill you'll have to teach me.

[She hesitates, reaching for the cigarette again.]

No, some dreams come true. But never in the way you hope.

[He offers the cigarette to her, a crooked smile as well.]

Tell me a dream that went wrong.

Mine, or someone else's? [Accepting it, she lifts it to her lips and takes a slow, short drag this time. It's easier than the first breath, and as she exhales she notices a slight lightheaded feeling.
]

Have you ever heard of a man named Vincent van Gogh?

Yes...he signed all of his 'Vincent'.

[Considering he has never seen the paintings in all their color, that was the thing that stood out most to him: that amid all the little blocks and dabs of paint, the artist had signed his name in the same forthright, personal manner of a child.]

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/back from midterm hell, sob

welcome back! :D

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