"No Life 'Til Leather"

No Remorse

The sky.

The endless, white plains of nothing but milk. Warm, sulking milk. The sky's never known any trouble, never had to worry about anything and nothing in particular. When asked about its daily routines, it would probably answer with a casual "Ah, nothing on my to-do list for today, just chilling." Such was the contrast between Terra and the sky it housed above. A ball of ori-rocks and misery, put against an open pasturing field, where the clouds, much like cattle-beasts, frolicked endlessly to their heart's content. Sure, sometimes a few moody ones would boil over and cry, maybe sprinkle a few snowflakes from above, even send a few thunderbolts barreling towards the barren wastelands, but never actually care enough to cause it too much trouble. The catastrophes were their own thing, not in any way encouraged or controlled by moody Mother Nature, no. The catastrophes ruled themselves by an unreadable set of rules known only to, surprisingly, one man on Terra, a man akin to an ant in the smaller scheme of things, a towering giant in the grander. A man far away from the horizons of that day's events.

Or was he?

"You're dragging."

Ines' voice bit hard into Andy's already red ears. Both the heat of heavy, physical exertion and the glaring sun piled up on him like "war-boys on some cheap whore", as the better W used to say. Better or worse, Andy has been truly contemplating those two words these past few weeks. The more he saw her face in his dreams, the more she started seeping into his subconsciousness and stealing Lemuel's dreamy form, the more he caught himself thinking about her even outside the realm of never-never land, where Sister Midnight sieved the dreaming's hair through her slender fingers. At that moment, lost in a Southern forest peppered with annoyingly lush oaks and bushes, vines that bit inhabiting their barks and clinging to them like the parasites they were, Andy found himself lost in a daze once more. An annoyed scoff soon helped bring his head back back down to Terra.

"Can we stop screwing around for now? I told you, twerp, I wanna get this over with and take the rest of the day off." She said, standing there with her arms crossed. The poor critter, Freddie, quivered by her bandage-clad legs and sniffled. The kid just kept sniffling, sniffling like there was no tomorrow. Andy blinked.

"Day off? You wanna get a day off?"

"That's what I said, yeah."

"Day off in Kazdel?" An incredulous look crawled onto his face. "Is that even possible?"

"It's possible when you don't have two snot-eaters to take care of." She bit back, before gently nudging Freddie's back with her shoe. "Did I tell you to stop walking? Keep the pace, worm."

"Yeah, worm-boy, keep it up." Andy stifled a giggle and followed right behind. The kid seemed to be on the verge of breaking down, yet he proudly wiped his face and continued on, shakingly crawling through the vines and roots that defiled the earth like landmines up in Central Kazdel.

"Worm-boy." Ines repeated, then raised an eyebrow. "Day by day, I'm seeing you twist and change more and more. Like a blooming dandelion."

"Dandelion? 'Cause they're gray? And fluffy?" He asked, bursting with barely hidden hints of hope at the assumed praise.

" 'Cause they're useless weeds. And 'cause you're turning into a proper piece of shit, no doubt courtesy of W." She sighed. "It's scary, honestly. I can barely even remember your old shadow. The one that crawled behind you when we first picked you up at that poker game."