1 Ashan 719
“Mathias.” said Zipper.“Fiona.” said Mads.
“Could you pass me Beethoven's Unholy Spatula?” Zipper said, not looking at him. For once, her lack of eye contact wasn’t a show of disrespect. “It’s quite urgent.”
“It usually is,” he acknowledged, glancing down at the warped and twisted figure that had, at one point in its miserable life, been the form of what was most certainly a human child, “You heard her, Tubbman.”
The wretched creature let out an agonized wheeze as it teetered over to a hollowed stump, slumped over the edge, and began to rummage around. In the next moment, it staggered back with what was, unmistakably, a silver spoon. It even had the audacity to sparkle as he picked it up.
Reaching down to take the offered utensil, Mathias frowned at his warped reflection. “Well,” he shrugged, putting the spoon into Zipper’s outstretched hand, “Bach’s Mostly Irreligious Soup Scooper serves the same function for half the cost of upkeep.”
It was mostly true. That and Tubbman was the only one of the three of them who could fetch anything from the damn stump.
Tubbman gurgled a pitiable trill that, as far as either of them could tell, probably meant he agreed. Either that or he wanted to die. It was a toss up between the two. The patient that Zipper was administering to, on the other hand, very much wanted to live given his incessantly verbal vigour.
“Beasts in the shop…” The man murmured as Zipper began tapping him on the forehead with the spoon. Gaschoi? Gasoline? His name was longer than any a mother had the right to inflict. He was built like a bear, dressed so heavily in black and feathers that he looked like a giant, man-sized crow, and smelled like- “Bloohd!”
“Blood.” Zipper mouthed under her breath. She didn’t even seem to notice she did it.
“Do you… want to talk about it?” Mathias ventured, unusually soft of tone. Tubbman gurgled next to him, but his body was so contorted it was impossible to tell where his head was, if he even had one; it was safe to assume he had his attention focused in Zipper’s general direction, at least. That or he was just focused on taking one more agonizing breath that prolonged his tortured and hated existence.
Tap, tap, tap. The spooner spooned her patient, and there were no words beyond that. She had not deign to hear him.
“What’s that smell?” the man cooed.
Mathias’ attention didn’t waver from the back of Zipper’s bobbed head, but it didn’t stop him from dryly speaking the answer in unison with the Father. If he noticed he’d done so, he gave no indication of it.
“Blood.”
“Blood.” Zipper echoed once more. “It sings to me.”
“It’s enough to make a man sick.” the Father said, nodding contently.
“You’ll be one of them soon,” Mathias murmured, still as a statue as had become his habit. And Zipper, in her actual nun’s habit, continued tapping the spoon against the Father’s forehead in an even rhythm. It seemed to soothe him and, this is merely a hypothetical guess, prevented him from turning into a raving wolf-beast gorged on the moon’s dead, unyielding light.
Better safe than sorry.
“What do you wish to speak about?” Zipper finally said,
There was probably something he was supposed to say, but he had never been very good at guessing things like that. Zipper, especially, saw right through attempts at deception, so he’d settled into the habit of simply saying precisely what was on his mind or, in more cerebral circumstances, giving his honest opinion. “You have been… uncharacteristically quiet of late.” An understatement when applied objectively, but he wasn’t well aware of that. “Is there-”
Tubbman gurgled out what was either a wet burp or one of his less important internal organs and spat out on to the floor. It turned out his mouth was located somewhere around his middle torso area.
“-any particular reason for it?”
She brought her head down closer to better inspect the forehead, her spoon tapping neither hastening nor slowing. “Boss fights.” she said simply. “I am apprehensive because there are a great many boss fights in our near future.”
One constant between them was there was no constant. It made gauging things exceedingly difficult for him. And for her, when she cared to try. It was impossible for Tubbman, of course, considering his higher functions had been severed when he’d lost the majority of his body mass in the accident.
“The Priest Animal is optional,” Mathias reminded her. He knew she knew, but he wasn’t certain if she meant the future or the future. They were difficult to keep straight when they were so wont to pop into and out of them like under clothes.
“Platinum or bust.” she admonished. Her tone tried for conviction but only managed grim resignation. “A man can slew a Priestess Animal, kill a set of triplets, drown a meteor-wielding pillbug masquerading as a spider, down an amalgamation of scholars woven together by eyes and bone, slay-” She took a breath so deep it could only have come from the idea of chasing a grown man who wore a cage as if it were a fedora for breaks on end. “-an asshole. Cripple a nurse. Retire the retired… but that man is no man if he seeks no challenge beyond the obligatory, his skills are no skills. He -or she- did not-”
There was a twinkle in her eye as she finally looked at him for but a moment, and a break in the spoon’s rhythm.
“-Git Gud.”
“I… see.” He personally preferred to tear open any living or un-living thing he saw to pocket whatever slimy treasures they held within them. It was one of the main reasons Tubbman was there in the first place. He’d rolled right out of the corpse of spider with a man’s body who’d been previously known as Appliqué, and Mathias had added him to his collection.
Mathias was focused on the perfectionist’s completionism.
Zipper was much more focused on laude and praises.
“Do you?”
.
“Much better after procuring those spectacles from Tongue-o-leftka’s office.” He didn’t wear them, of course, but just knowing that he could helped his vision innumerably.
She shrugged. Her ambivalence was understandable; she was more of a torch person. They brought fire and sight, she would say. The utility was doubled. “Let us be off.” she said. She gently balanced the scoop of the spoon down on the Father’s nose and, when he didn’t make a sound or erupt into a giant man-eating monster lost in a frenzy to feast upon blood and gore, patted herself down and gestured towards the church in the opposite direction.
“To the animal then?”
Tubbman gurgled.
Mathias began to nod but paused midway, his sharp vision catching sight of a pale hand framed by lace ruffles, drooped over the edge of a rooftop a few feet down from the stone balcony up ahead. “His wife,” he murmured, gesturing towards the corpse for Tubbman’s benefit, though the creature, understandably, had no idea what it was he was referring to. “I will just be a moment,” he assured Zipper as he started into a brisk trot ahead.
Speed was necessary, as he’d have to drop down from where the stone railing had been smashed at some point earlier in history, and, though the distance back was barely even half of his own body’s length, he’d be unable to simply climb back up and would need to take the long way round, effectively needing to climb the stairs twice to get both the treasure he was certain she carried and the progress Zipper was so insistent about; she didn’t like being kept waiting.
He, on the other hand, had to wait a very long time before she found lucidity.
