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[MoHN] the medium is the message. [attn.: liz]
#1
“Support the strong, give courage to the timid, remind the indifferent, and warn the opposed.”
-- Whitney M. Young, Jr.

--

Depending on the method used and the amount of flesh one starts with, tanning skin into leather can take hours, weeks, or months. Avery, though remarkably patient, chooses her course of action by its efficacy to the purpose. In this case, a week and a half will have to do.

--

Her steward contacts her early in the morning on Saturday.

Avery is sitting on the terrace with her father, a large sunhat shading her features, a pair of sunglasses on his face. There is an umbrella over the table they share. Breakfast is a mixed fruit salad of grapefruit, strawberries, peaches and sliced grapes, thin silver-dollar pancakes with vanilla-maple syrup, and miniature quiches with sausage, onions, and peppers. They have juice and milk and lattes with leaves drawn in the foam.

Music is playing, not from stereo speakers, but a music performance student from one of the local colleges who has been hired to provide breakfast music with her violin four mornings a week. Even if they don't take breakfast outdoors or even if they don't take breakfast, young Melissa is welcomed inside, given a spot to perform, and she plays. There are mornings when she is simply being paid to practice, filling the house with music. But then there are days like this, standing to the side on the terrace. It eases the digestion, Avery claims. Maybe it does.

Their butler comes outside with a tray, and on that tray is a small card with a note from her steward. Avery thanks him, looks it over, and smiles to herself.

Your correspondence is prepared.

- L


--

Later that day, Avery meets her steward at her new place, which is so high up and with walls so unshared that finally, finally, she feels separated from the world in the way she needs this sanctuary to be. Her most trusted servant of all brings her a hatbox, only big enough for a cloche, the outside covered in white and pink vertical stripes of organza. It's a lovely hatbox. Avery stands at the head of her dining table and removes the lid. Then she removes the cloche, which is velvet and emerald-colored, adorned with a black band and black feathers and a black silk flower, but she sets that aside

and lifts the skull from the box, staring into the socks that used to hold eyes. Meanspirited, corrupted eyes, but eyes that were once human. He was no longer serving the purpose that Gaia created humans to fill, however. And as Avery could tell from his tattoos, he had given up on trying long before rEEntry got to him.

When I am finished, I will take your head as a prize and keep your skull as a gift to present to one of the mystics of my tribe, should one prove deserving of the honor.

The bone is scoured of skin and muscle. It has been cleaned painstakingly. Avery looks it over and determines that whomever of her staff did the work -- though she's rather sure she knows who -- should receive a bonus. One mustn't ask one's servants to cut off a head and clean out a skull for one without recompense. She gently sets the skull back into the hatbox, replaces the cloche over it, since she has yet to find an occasion to wear that particular hat, and replaces the lid.

"Very good," she says. "That should be put in my closet on one of the higher shelves. We'll wrap it more suitably, should it ever be given as a gift. Now about the other --"

--

This item was just as difficult to prepare. Avery is impressed with how tidy the edges of the piece are. It has been cured and dried, but is not yet leather; it is still rather flexible, even a bit limp. Definitely thin. She is pleased with its presentation, set atop a white, quilted satin cushion within a document-sized black box. Almost funereal, which is terribly appropriate, given the circumstances. Avery has the lid of this second box to one side, and she stares down at the item for some time before she gives a nod.

"Excellent," she says, and replaces the lid carefully. "I don't think we also need to include a note with this one, do you?"

Her steward agrees: no. The gift speaks for itself. Avery smiles. "Let's make sure that whoever delivers it is at least a few degrees removed from our own. I suspect they will know who it is from, all the same. Thank you. That will be all."

She hands over the box. It is taken from her sight, as is the hatbox with the skull. Avery walks across the dining room, hand trailing along the polished surface of the table, until she gets to the doors to the terrace. From this height she can see most of the city, and the mountains to the west. She breathes in the humid, hot air as she walks outside, bathing herself in sunlight. That sunlight does not last long. Already she can see clouds on the horizon, gathering to produce a storm that will last most of the afternoon. Avery fixes her eyes on the distance. Eagerness, lust for something she doesnotknowwhat fills her.

--

After dark on July 13th, after the torrential downpour has finished, a messenger comes to the the House of God. The messenger was hired through a few different channels, given a box wrapped in a large envelope, and given an address.

Your skin, however:

Inside the envelope is a dark box made of blackened wood, not stained but burnt. The wood is veneer-thin, and the size one would send documents in. Someone opens the lid: Christina or Carlos, for the messenger would not give it to anyone else.

of that I will take the largest identifiable piece that is left,

Sitting atop a satin cushion like one finds in a coffin is a neatly cut rectangle of human skin, cured and dried to almost-leather, the edges curling. On that flesh is a tattoo of a swastica in prison blue.

and I will have it delivered to whoever your master is.

They will recognize it.
my whole life is thunder.
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my whole life is thunder.
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