Title: Ever Happily, Chapter 3
Summary: The Endless, from an audience's perspective. Daytime TV has nothing on this.
Author's Note: There's probably too much straight description in this one, but I'm fond of it all the same. I throw myself on your tender mercy, reader.
Today, Barnabas is watching a puppet show.
He finds his mind is becoming more and more non-linear the longer he stays in Delirium's realm, so that he finds it very difficult to follow the thread of the story. But that might be because Delirium is the one telling it, and her mind is not linear at all, or circular or spherical or even hexagonal, for that matter (dodecahedron-oid is probably the closest that mortal geometry can come, but the best approximation is really a black hole or the shape of time travel).
The puppets themselves don't even seem to fully understand the story they are acting out. They keep shifting and blurring around the edges, as though yearning desperately to break free of their confines and be something else. They seem hopelessly and perennially confused, although all things considered Delirium is doing a rather good job of keeping them in the shapes they're supposed to be. Barnabas knows how difficult this is for her, and he beats his tail against the firmament in silent applause for her effort.
He manages to recognize them, barely, and he is still logical enough to deduce the identities of those he's never met. Death is less of a puppet and more of a plushie doll, all soft and cuddly-looking, with a wide smile on her face and bright, sparkling, warm glass-bead eyes. Her long black hair hangs down in strings, and the small curling mark under her eye has been painstakingly painted with a child's marker on the pale white cloth of her face. A tiny silver ankh hangs around her neck on a tiny silver chain, and it jingles as she moves.
Dream is a wooden doll whose joints have been frozen stiff. He walks with a jerking, mechanical gait, he trails a black cloak behind him on the ground like the dreary tail-feather train of a bedraggled bird, and his eyes are black pits. His skin is the dark, drained color of thunderheads, and every so often the front half of his stoic face swings outward on hinges, revealing a cluster of Dream-imps laughing hysterically in his skull cavity, where his brain should have been. A little mechanical raven sits and croaks incessantly on his shoulder without moving its beak. It seems, to the best of Barnabas's ability to guess, to be talking about Disney films.
Desire is the very opposite of Death, sharp and hard where the other is warm and soft; Desire seems to be made of cutting edges, which is impossible because its figure is sculpted in curves, but Barnabas has become accustomed to the impossible and hardly notices. Desire is a wooden marionette, but it is also a wicked-bladed scythe, a switchblade on a spring ready to leap forward, to cut and to rend, on the slightest provocation. Its tawny eyes are quite literally burning, crackling and raging and spitting out sparks. Barnabas finds himself a little bit intimidated by it, a little bit afraid of it, even though it's only a puppet under Delirium's pale, spidery hand.
Destiny is just a little miniature carved in stone, incapable of any kind of movement at all. Despair is a plump and sagging naked woman with a rat-tail, with gray wrinkled skin like she'd been soaked in water too long, and protruding teeth that made her look more gorilla than human.
Destruction is a toy soldier, tall by puppet standards, with broad shoulders and a wide painted grin and a scarlet uniform bedecked with shiny gold buttons, which contrast the bristling red mass of his beard (which Barnabas has never seen before, as Destruction had shaved it off by the time they met). Barnabas is only able to recognize his old friend by Delirium's (eerily accurate) imitation of his laugh. In all other aspects the Destruction-puppet resembles no one so much as the Nutcracker, the old childhood hero coming to the rescue of the sugar fairy princess.
The puppets, Barnabas knows, are not a reflection of reality at all. They do not depict the Endless as they really are; they show Delirium's family as Delirium sees them. The puppets show what the Endless look like through Delirium's eyes.
It is a fascinating glimpse into Delirium's universe, but Barnabas is too distracted to draw many conclusions. He is too busy watching the puppets prance and caper, directed by Delirium's fingers high in the air above them. She controls them like marionettes, but seems to have forgotten that they should be on strings.
It is a fascinating drama, to say the least. Dream and Death are arguing, with Destiny quietly cracking apart and crumbling and reassembling himself in the background. Desire is laughing wildly and cruelly, flashing fangs that look like needles and waving fingers tipped with knives. Despair sulks in Desire's shadows (the androgyne has two; one male, one female), and rats climb all over Despair's desiccated body until she is only a writhing lump of squeaks and fur.
The conflict between Death and Dream comes to an explosive conclusion, as Death throws up her hands and stalks away, with little wisps of steam curling from her lanky threads of hair. Dream stands woodenly, listlessly, apparently deflated and without purpose now that his battle with his sister is ended.
Desire steps forward from the background to fill the void, and calmly proceeds to slice Dream up into a pile of splintered pieces with its finger-claws. It sits down next to this grisly cairn of flesh and begins fishing morsels of Dream out on the tips of its fingers and popping them into its mouth. Relaxed and reposing, Desire is gnawing delicately on what would have been the Dream-puppet's bones.
Death comes storming back onto the scene, and is apparently enraged by Desire's lustful fratricide. She gestures angrily and a gust of fire leaps out at the androgyne, but Desire easily leans aside, and the inferno catches Despair instead. The rats flee in terror from the tentacles of fire now crawling over Despair's skin. Despair herself does not scream, or run, or even flinch. She only stands morosely, burning, looking gloomily up at her twin as though begging for forgiveness.
Destruction has until now been standing with his back to his siblings, a little wooden bayonet poking over one shoulder, but at this latest outrage he turns, waving his hands and shouting in a little puppet voice which is the sound of a bass drum shrunk to the size of a thimble. His voice has a gloss of the old brass timbre Barnabas remembers, but it is unable to calm the Endless, who are beginning to shout and seethe, sometimes seven, sometimes more; they are wavering and threatening to collapse.
The turmoil is finally calmed by a fanfare of trumpets and birds of paradise that rings out over the tableau. The Endless pause in their fighting and turn as one towards the source of the sound; even Dream's severed head rotates from its position on the firmament. Another puppet comes dancing onto the scene out of oblivion, and Barnabas understands in an instant that this must be Delirium herself.
The newcomer is a beautiful fairy sugarcane princess, pink-glossed and tinsel-bedecked, with great crumpled shimmering wings trailing from her shoulders and gills quavering in her neck. She dances out among her siblings with inhuman grace, and her footsteps are the trills of birds.
The Delirium-puppet grips Destruction by the hand, drawing him up among his siblings again. She leans down to scold the seated Desire, who at first only pokes out a perfectly pink and pointed tongue, but eventually gives in and stands. Its head is bowed contritely, its sharp edges already beginning to sand themselves away.
The Delirium-puppet blows a kiss to the jumble of puppet-flesh that once was Dream, and the skeleton instantly resurrects itself, only this time he's clad in white and no longer laughing behind his face.
At a gesture from the Delirium-puppet, the flames that plague Despair are extinguished and a smile spreads across the gruesome gorilla face. Destiny stops its hourglass tumbling of sand and stone, stays solid and actually begins to grin, begins to laugh.
Then the Delirium-puppet (who might be Delight) forms her siblings into a circle around her, and they all dance a spinning dance, clutching each other's hands, in perfect harmony and fondness and love.
The Endless dance for some time, but eventually they fall into piles on the ground and begin to snore, sleeping happily. The festivities concluded, Delight strides off, arm-in-arm with Death, to sit in front of a movie screen the size of an envelope on which flabby faces open and close like the mouths of fish.
"The EnD," Delirium (the real one, not the puppet) burbles happily, as the miniature dramatis personae dissolve back into the wisps of raw firmament from which they came. "Did u like it, doggie? did u?"
But before Barnabas can collect himself enough to answer, half of a hippopotamus goes drifting past and Delirium is scampering after it in hot pursuit (she leaves a trail of flame behind her like the track of a star), leaving the dog to sit and wonder at a clenched-tight churning discomfort in his stomach, in his soul.
He never met Delight. He wonders if she really would have been capable of fixing the family messes which Destruction used to rant about at length. He wonders if she really could have made the whole world happy and bright and made family love each other and get along.
Maybe it's just the effect of being too near Delirium for too long, but Barnabas finds himself yearning inexplicably for the warm worm-ridden heat of his mother. He wants to be happy with his family that he never had, and he wants Delirium to be happy in hers. He finds himself miserable for no reason (probably looking too logically at things Delirium takes in stride). He finds himself missing Delight, and he never even knew her…
Delight is gone, replaced by Delirium; happiness traded for insanity. Maybe that's why the family of the Endless fell apart.
Review, please.