Bertram's Bellows (written by Marci Moore)

The Mithral district was a splendor to behold. Bellows could feel it's regal buildings and meticulously engineered, aesthetic, roads shudder with revulsion with each step he took in his garish attire, still tattered and bloodied from that dark, violent pit in the earth, haggard face somehow seeming more battered and poorly aged than ever before.   He lumbered forward, seemingly immune to the sharp expressions of Alzira's most wealthy as he passed. People like that, the comfortable and greedy, could never understand his world and there was no love lost for it. He had seen more Wheels and opportunity in that mine than in his entire life, but not a single mint of it mattered. "That poor girl... ", he rumbled under his husky breath.   The streets and it's noises excused themselves from the poor man's company, leaving him awash in a sea of images, lights, and sensation. Her frightened eyes, somehow more desperate and terrified than any dead man's frozen stare. He reflexively coughed as he felt the tickle of salted, stale, air creep in his throat, as if the muscular tube of flesh and sound were saying , "I remember too."   Haughty and well dressed well to do's parted around his repugnant visage, his face locked in a scowl that threatened to blanch the world of joy. On this day, of all days, even Alzira's finest knew to avoid Alriza's *Finest, *as he briskly stomped past on his way to more humble abodes, seeking comfort from his enraptured mind as it sizzled in corrosive reverie, it's torment liquefying and threatening to pour from his eyes in a searing hot mess, doomed to careen into the bitter crags and valleys, straight into the dry, unkempt bristles that made up his thick chops.   At last, he awoke again, reunited with the noise of the streets as reality politely came back to check in on the poor blunder. He stood outside the gates of the Mithral district, a pale smile finally crosses his face as he gazed upon more familiar streets. He was already home. His ears seemed to breathe in the world around him. The clattering of foot steps, bits of garbled conversation and gossip, laughter, the yipping of children and the fussing of mothers...It all pattered against his eardrums like the most gentle rain. He was home...The salted air left his lungs as he exhaled at long last, his shoulders sagging as the weight of it all bled out of him in a surge of cool sweat. For now, in this fragile, precious moment, all that mattered in the world was right here, all around him. Vibrant, unpredictable, and so awing, yet collectively unaware of it's self, ignorant to the sheer beauty it's very existence even brings to the cold world. Too large for even a single word, the very notion marring the scope of it's miracle. Simply put, Bellows was more happy than anyone to be alive and still connected to the collective whole, his every sense and thought paying tribute to every new light and sound, eager to continue their endless, maddening work for many years to come.   In blessedly thoughtless state, Detective Bellows continued on his way, each breath of warm air a balm to that unsettling tingle in his throat, which radiated it's thanks by humming an old, somehow unforgotten tune as the rest of his bustled down the road and individual particles of creations splendor, as they too carried on about their day, still unconnected and blind to the inner suffering around them.   Soon, the familiar and worrying creak of ever aging boards greeted Bellow's clumsy gate. The ocean was still, hushed sloshing pleasantly accenting the sounds of labor all around, as if it too remembered what happens when you frustrate those who toil within the harbor. Bertram certainly remembered, a sobering sense of nostalgia immersing him in those gentle waves as he and the ocean whispered of that horrible, chaotic revolt, before he thanked it for confiding in him and returned his gaze ahead of him, towards rest, and away from the specters that haunted him. He grew thirstier with each step, his hands ushering the bottle ruby red firecherry wine to his lips, eager to relieve their sad brother of the bitterness of it all. It tasted like all the good memories from all the best days he had ever had, spiced with those warm summer days of his youth. "Figures they'd all only fit in ta one bottle...", he murmured resentfully before he finally chuckled, the relief of small jubilation only stifled by his aching body. He took another swig, The docks too receding away with the humble tide. He barely even registered opening his ramshackle door as he stumbled into his tiny shack, it's three hinges rattling as the towering door of boards and rusted nails banged against the wall, a new small fissure running into older ones in it's wake. A few steps more and his bunk rushed to meet him, the loud crash of it's frame upon his own deafened by comfort that now swaddled the mountainous brute. Even the ache of his still tender wounds couldn't anchor him to his senses any longer, thought and perception blurring into that space in between here and there.   'You almost died today, please don't make jokes like that...' huffed the small horned child, her doll like face trying it's best to be taken seriously as Mr.Bellows rumbled with his usual nervous laughter. "I know...I Know. I'm sorry. Really." The big lug sheepishly opened the door to her super secret hide out, a small abandoned warehouse just on the outskirts of the docks. She stamped in, casting a frustrated glance at Bellows, giving no pause as her small tail whipped into his shin. "Now com'on Marina, don't be like that. You know nuffin's gonna get the best of Mr.Bellows!" It was almost like a parody as the hulk followed after the impish child, hunkered over as if leaning towards her height would help his words reach her. The room was almost barren, save for a child sized encampment in the back right corner of the room, in a room alcove in the wall once used for excess storage space. Mr.Bellows had nicknamed it 'Marina's Promenade', since it was mostly made of goods lifted from Fortune's Promenade, Alzira's mercantile lifeblood. Random sundries were scattered about, what was fresh loot and what was empty refuse was hard to tell anymore such as his small companion lived. Bells, candles, assorted clothes and rags, mountains of blankets and pillows. It was too much to take in, each shift of his eyes catching a new array of random curiosities that threatened to lead him astray from the single path made through the maelstrom of petty theft evidence. He halted in front of her bedroll, watching her throw herself down on it, her rump bouncing off slightly as she scowled up at him, her shoulders squared back and arms crossed, her budding horns seeming to stretch ever high in defiance of him. "How's a big idiot like you gonna get stabbed by something with half your reach? What, you get lost talking to yourself again? Did you try telling them you're with the ACW!", Her mousy voice warbled as it strained to imitate gravel before she coughed a bit and continued her condescending tantrum, "Oh, wait, I got it, you once again found yourself giving a shit about some scumbag who was happy enough to stab you for the trouble. It's that one, isn't it?" Mr.Bellows sighed, his face sagging deeper somehow, "Marina...", He slowly lowered himself to the floors, taking care not to sit on anything too fragile, "I get you're scared, but that same thing that drives me to help an ungrateful little git like you also drives me to do stupid shite like get stabbed by a deranged man with paranoid ideas and a very sharp knife." The little imp glowered at him as he sheepishly chuckled, her amber eyes now showing her infernal heritage as they bore into poor Mr.Bellow's face like the unforgiving sun on a hot Alzira day. She sat rigid and still, her tiny arms crossed and lips pursed, as Bellows failed to find anymore words. The room faded away, leaving only those amber pits burning in the void as new actors entered the scene, Thoughts. And too many of them. A tangled mess of overwhelming anxiety and confusion with a stern chaser labeled 'regret'. 'This was one of the last times we spoke to her before dooming her with our compassion,' The baritone voice seemed to spit up in revulsion as it garbled out the word, compassion. 'This was one of her last days, you stupid fuck, and all you had to do was reach for words to make her happy. But NO. You just love hiding behind your JOKES. Well are you laughing now, funny man?' Somewhere, nestled by the sea in a tiny hole in the world, a giant toils in it's fitful rest. It weeps and mumbles, so lost to the dark now it has forgotten it's prison is self made, that it buried itself in this hole to escape the much WORSE things beyond. 'May as well spared her the hope of kindness in this world, she'd be miserable but alive. Maybe you could have kept up with her and helped her re-acclimate to an honest living, but alas, the swollen and brutish appendages we call fingers could not grasp such novel ideas. How does it always seem that everything is perpetually out of our stagnant, bloated grasp? Have you ever given that any thought, you STUPID fucking clown?' Bertram didn't know what to say, this grizzled and handsome sounding voice was really hitting it home. 'Was that another joke? Are you fucking with me? We sound SCARY, you twit. NEVER handsome. It's a voice that could only be described as both loud and noisome to the ears, and it radiates from that awful abused creature we torment down below. It wails against the pale smoke in it's tarry den, helpless to do anything but watch as you fuck it all up, Bellows. If only you could hear the poor thing now, rasping and roaring as you lay in a stupor, threatening to bring the very walls down around us as you fail to even breathe right in your sleep. Soon, it's screaming will be done. Soon, the world will have to endure yet another day with you in it and another that she could have been a day older.' The amber eyes blinked and the world was completely gone, an infinite sea of darkest ink rushed to meet Bellows anywhere he tried to look. He was alone. And he was finally Home.