Yours Truly 2016 / Cascadia College / Bothell, WA | Page 61

Elga resumes her cooking, and he narrows
his eyes at the mess stabbed into his map.
The ugly knot of thread has exactly eight
ends scraggling out like tentacles. He rubs
his temples and wonders if that is what his
brain conjured in the tiny black hours of the
night. An octopus. Of course. The ridiculous
map is shoved aside in favor of a larger one
he had finished. His fingers move along the
strings and skim the pins, tracing blue supply
routes, black reconnaissance patterns, and
red battle formations. It all forms a very
elegant pattern. He taps his fingers beside
an area he is unhappy with. The paper is
very light beneath the gold of his fingers,
and even lighter where his blackened wrists
rest on thin borderlines. The ink blossoming

“You are being
unbelievably stupid”
in his skin forms the sleek silhouettes of a
dragon on each wrist. One holds a sword,
the other a scroll. The ink is faded and
blurred at the edges, no longer a deep, hot
black, but a colder dark coal color. He lifts
his hands from the maps to roll them up and
place them in a safer location.
The street outside the window is slick with
rain and dark with horses standing in traffic.
He wrinkles his nose at the scent of the city,
and moves back into the kitchen. Elga is just
placing two steaming plates on the table
when he returns to his seat. From upstairs
comes the sound of small, busy feet, tossed

bed coverings, and long, drawn-out whines.
He smiles around the rim of his coffee cup.
Elga has always had excellent timing.
1870
He looks down at his hands as he plays.
No key ever quite hits all the way home,
giving a dreamlike sensation to the way
his fingers press them. He turns his wrist
to reach another key, and the light of the
fuse bounces off the ink there. The wings
are done in sharp, clean lines with all the
points elongated, and the color is deep
and fresh enough to vaguely reflect the
sparkling flame as it journeys closer to the
red dynamite.
1868

It is a faint, vaguely-croaked whisper.

“Just let me die, Sterling.”

He murmurs the words without looking at
her. Through his lowered lashes he can see
the dark smoke rolling off his lips. It blossoms
above his face and disperses into the thinner
layer of smoke that fills the entire den. A
dreamlike silver veil that lulls him closer and
closer to sleep.
She is still there though, ponytail
shimmering across her shoulders as she
turns her gaze over the limp bodies scattered
around her. Her lips purse as she watches
him, lying across a velvet sofa with heaviness
in his eyelids. There is a bottle of something
poisonous on the table—belladonna, by the

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