You leave the gathering, your heart a flurry of anger and shame, your blood pounding in your ears. Emotions play a dizzying game inside your chest, and you hate it (a new emotion in and of itself, hate, which only adds to your discomfort and hatred). Where before you felt nothing, now you seem to feel everything at once- and you can't, you just can't, so you take your broken body and limp away, back to the sea and your stash of stones. Gaucho fixed you, mostly - certainly he saved your life (which you can never repay him for, and you know this, and you hate it), but you remain a cripple, your broken bones and torn flesh not kit together quite right. Why? you wonder in a surge of self-pity. Why should you suffer, be beaten- why should people be taken from you, when you've aspired all your life to do nothing but be awesome? All you wanted was a life of simple excellence, with your Ma and your sisters and your friends and Gaucho and your rocks. Why did things have to be complicated? You did not ask for this, damnit!

You kick, furious, at a rock, and the contact makes your body shudder with pain.

You scream.

"FUCK!"

Fuck.

Tears burn at your eyes, and you bite your lip stubbornly, refusing to let them fall. You stare accusingly at the offending rock, a large chunk of bright onyx- one of your dearest prizes. You eye it critically, anger still making your breath come fast, but now the anger has a direction, a purpose- you know what you'll do with it, what you'll make. You inhale deeply, calling on your magic, and around you stones and metal begin to shift, your surprisingly comprehensive and deeply treasured collection of metal and stone trembling, then rolling, coming together as you focus in your grief and pain, deadening yourself to the world and becoming lost in your work.

-----------

You come to at last, blinking as the final stone falls into place.

The rich supply of metal and stone you once held so dear is nearly depleted; all that remains is some sandstone, shale, and quartz. You've taken the metal and melded it into an iron/bronze alloy, with hints of bright copper striping though; this makes up the bulk of the figure, accounting for what was once muscle and bone. The golem's legs are polished onyx, black from hooves to the barring. Lapis lazuli streaks across its chest. You use vibrant jasper for the handprint on his flank, and finely spun gold to mark the sun around his eyes. His wings are spun of black sand, silica pulled together and crafted into a fine, sturdy sheet of something resembling coarse beach glass. His mane and tail, though short, are made in much the same way.

But the final touch, the true sign that this is a labor of love, a creation into which you poured heart, soul, and emotion, is marked by the gleaming silver of Gaucho's eyes, antlers, and nose ring. For these are made not from scavenged minerals, but from titanium, your titanium- metal pulled from your barren side, flesh and blood, your skin made into a memorial of the father who brought you to life three times. It gleams in the autumn sun, a testament to the love you were never able to give him in life, the emotions you choked down because they were too complicated to handle.

You wish you could go back and tell him. Tell him he was a good Da; tell him you admired him; tell him he was everything you wanted to be, everything you feared you could never become.

You wish you could have been his son, not his kinda-son, and he your Da, not your maybe-Da. You wish you'd asked him to teach you to fight, instead of running off and having stupid adventures that wound up with you almost dead (and him right there to save you each time.) You wish that you had told him about your friends, asked him about the past, joined in with the siblings you know you have but never really acknowledge. You wish you could have heard that he was proud.

Your side is empty, stripped are of the silver that usually spreads across its length. It's a fitting image, an apt analogy, a metaphor for the hollowness that once again spreads throughout your body. You sigh, the sound of crashing waves heavy in your ears.

The golem is done, but it isn't enough. It's a crude thing, though artistic; distinctly horse-shaped, Gaucho-shaped even, but without the striking passion of the Wildfire. It is cold metal and stone- it isn't warm, the way he was.

You wonder if anything ever will be warm like that again.



"Speech"