Volk's dreams were of the forest and her constantly new sneakers. They weren't an expensive brand, and Jonas had figured out his little girl didn't grow as fast as the others, so they bought two pairs at a time. Her vanity expander faster than her body, though, and Reno started to wear them only for the drier months, and only with him, in the woods. He was happy to be back, his adult body moving like the younger boy, but with the strength he'd earned, aging his muscles. He sighed contently when she fell from a protruding rock she'd not seen, and jogged to help her up. How much of their times together had been her crying? She did it well, and he suspected it was out of practice. She said his name in this technicolor woodland, because she relied on him. He moved faster. When he leaned down to pick her up, her hands out for his, he hesitated. Her eyes were smudged in charcoal and her mouth was fenced in with jelly blood, the kind that stayed cold when it wanted to coagulate.<br/><br/>She smiled suddenly, like her tears had been a performance, even if her foot was askew, joint wide inside her skin - air and bone in there. There was meat coming out of her mouth - incidentally the minced kind mother liked to shape and father liked to slightly under cook - and she was speaking through the bloodied, pink product. "Didn't you come home to eat me, Volgkt?" Her fingers curled and reached, again like she expected him to pick her up. He shook his head, horrified of this amalgamation of the Renos he knew. Woman's breasts when she tore her shirt, and womanhood right there on her stomach, a disarray of the classical lures, like she'd put herself together without knowing how. But when there was that visible tinge between her eyebrows - don't reject me in here too - he hooked his hands under her arms and held her to him.<br/><br/>Volk woke up when she started eating his throat, but it was a pleasant return to himself. There'd not nearly been enough sleep, and the body knew that, but he was hoping to see their work in daylight. At home, where he had his library of other girls to cry with less significance to him, sitting up in bed didn't mean so much. Here it seemed the days were starker and blurred at the same time. His mouth stuck to his dirty arm, of course. He laughed at the feel of lips separating from skin slowly. He was hardly the most hygienic boy, but thought about the implications of filth and spring perfumes in toxic cleaners soaking into his face. He didn't know he was a handful of minutes too late to see her leave. Unlike the waking deceased the girl Reno had become, Volk was ruthlessly alert standing. No groans like father.<br/><br/>He pulled the headgear off, walking the only holy place for him, and stalked down the stairs he'd seen in the limited light. With the sun coming in to offer the lie of warmth, he could clearly see the house as it was trying to be its old self by his hand. He couldn't help but seeing Reno in the naked walls. He couldn't' do this for her, but it inspired him. If he'd come to this current barren box yesterday, he might very well have been equally torn up, but now, since the minuscule improvement was his, he thought it was beautiful. It was hope, he thought, and it was something where there had only been death. Really, now Reno's other graveyard had become a testament to all things Volk loved - the glow of his own successful efforts and nostalgia. It would be apparent to anyone who could read the sanctimoniously assembled pretend in him, that he was putting too much into a vacated building, so that he could have something.<br/><br/>Looking around he felt a little like he'd been left behind in an abandoned vessel of faith. Despite the insistence of Father Perry, Volk had not taken to religion. Towers with crossed beams were beautiful to him, and he'd tried, but there were too many early seeds of the reverent libertine in the boy to find comfort in purity and devotion. He loved the aspect of asking without paying, though. Here, he realized there'd been some kind of faith, anyway. In the trinkets. In the eternity of Reno's house, where he'd been on his knees for Miranda, and had her be on hers for him. All the things he'd done, the building of a hero, mostly in the blue eyes of the daughter, and his relationship as it evolved and degenerated equally with the parents - it was fable-like, wasn't it? So he was left to that now, visiting where those objects weren't. No blanket that covered the entire family when they watched great events on the loyal television. Same blanket he perversely liked to put between mother's teeth so they wouldn't wake Reno. Jonas's pristine coasters, Reno's tiger. Where they all burnt now? She seemed like she'd become a fire girl, frightened and impulsive. Dust crusted and dark, he visited with the little children and their parents in different stages of being changed by him.<br/><br/>Volk sat with his back to Miranda's door, and stared into father's study. On their first night, when she was committing a crime as real as it was written in the law, he'd not know it would lead to employment. Volk laughed to himself and knocked on the thin wood with his hard head. Beautiful woman. At first she was taller than him, too. Nurturing in the room where she did her crafts, those quilts, and lither leather jewelry. Hand to his wrist. The city boy also had forgotten boxes. Kind words on his performances first, that patient glaze to her eyes, that was only happy he was learning. But he saw the change in her when he grew selfish. She was appalled with her wide mouth and addicted with her body. How happy he'd been, when Jonas was away, abusing and enslaving his wife. Volk elbowed the barrier and broke mother's door. Hands in his face, breathing to suffocate the fire between hemispheres and the melting amygdala. Maybe he'd wanted to best father in some way, now that mother offered to belong to him. He'd not been that kind of soul before.<br/><br/>After a few protein bars from his hide in the bag, he laid on the living room floor and looked at the word outside from the window in his hands. Some of the girls were getting restless with his absence, and they'd come to worry he wouldn't return. Some of them wrote as thought he was already a memory. Volk chuckled in the lonely space. His stock was growing. In the end he tired of laying with his arms out for the ceiling never to return his offer of embrace, and rolled up, streaks of the sun lacerating his back. He wasn't done with this chalk-full solitude, but he needed a different flavor. A gust outside offered the next course. He went to eat.<br/><br/>It was cold, of course, even with the dust layering his meager, short sleeves. He wandered, black and remembering, among the dead machines and the proud grass in all its colors. Death come for vacation, in Burning Bear. He felt a bit of the power that had taken him through the house at night, and wanted to perfect the image of a reaper. He did not find the cutting tool for souls or weeds at first, when he opened father's shop. He walked in before he was struck by it, and pivoted around, half a lap, and fell to half his length, too. Here the dust wanted vengeance for what he'd eradicated in the larger box. Volk hugged his face with one arm and cried, and spitted through hugging teeth. This was Jonas's spirit. Hadn't he seen father put that wrench there, ready to use it again in a moment? Hadn't Volk himself placed those lights on that bench. The rage that sparked back was the same that had him put his hand on Reno yesterday, but she wasn't here to divert the blame this time. He was just quietly sitting there, deeply loathing himself and his life for a while.<br/><br/>And then he stood up and made clouds as he stole the blades he could find, and left the doors wide open when he left. Like a savage he went about the grass. Thankless fucking slavery, but he needed to gut this place for redemption, roots and stem and flowerhead. Even the belligerent spirit that dressed red knew to leave her dandelions. He suspect it was out of laziness. Also, he shouldn't hurt the last beautiful thing here, yet. More therapy in something that was decidedly more violent than spreading dirt into the air. The boy, who'd done his share of yard work under Jonas, was spending himself, forgetting about the chill that beckoned for him to notice, too.<br/><br/>Collin was not so productive with his palpable, heavy demons. It is hard to know what a king who was usurped before his time looks like inside, but it is safe to bet on some pit of poison, whether it is dead liquids or living monsters. He went from laughing at fond memories where Volk's wit had added to the insult of his burning spirits that drew potential social allies in, to hissing rage among the staples of his boyhood room. Collin stayed close back then, ever Volk's harbinger, and had loved him too. When the old man in the blue overalls bought them forbidden bottles from the one good store, he'd always see if the taller, darker boy would participate. Collin didn't like when the Wicker King didn't come, because it felt too much like picking up scraps. To be entirely fair, Collin had tried some of the girls after Volk, maybe exactly because of that. Here I am, hypocrite among the stale paper balls. So here he was, angry and obsessed and angry again, thinking to fuck with that betrayer, who went away to live his high-school life again, but with better people and brighter venues, but the same amount of worship clinging to him. But Collin didn't fuck Volk. It would perhaps have dispelled some of this condensed fixation.<br/><br/>While Collin spoke to some boys who had also inherited their father's largeness, Volk spit and looked at the yard. It was better now, even in the coming evening. His back hurt from the ineffective rummaging through this veritable purgatory of nature, but he'd damned well done a job. He threw the knives and the tools at a long since useless car and went inside. He found her note and held his to his cheek. Sentimental boy put it right into his bag. He found the shower next. He wanted to take care of father's crypt of motor oil and neglect, but he didn't want to wear the skin of the house anymore. Still, he didn't shake out the jeans or the shirt. By the tile, standing in the tub where he'd helped bathe Reno and also made her mother mad with forbidden contortions and intimate violence, he saw to himself. He was accustomed to regular satisfaction, after all. It was good, and took the last of his anger with it down the drain, along with the shampoo bubbles and his other filths.<br/><br/>Collin had easily filled up his car. Some of them were bending their arms and filling their livers already. He'd had some of the cinnamon sludge, too. Driving always felt like a precarious task without it. He was at once angry and elated. The music was almost blinding, but they were all used to it. He laughed in his throat and the clucks could be heard over the abusive base. There was a stick, just marginally thicker than the others in the ditch. Why hadn't she taken her father's car? He stopped for the girl who'd not had the flavor of her brother, even when Collin had insisted and tasted her very deeply.<br/><br/>"What? He's back a few hours and now he doesn't let you take the car? Jump in. We were on our way anyway."