DIEBOUND

“I didn’t know you felt that way.”
INTENSE BLUE EYE STARE
PUPILS DILATE

sigh
“Yeah, I feel that way. You’re somebody to me.”

She rose.

“Somebody special.” Brown eyes, looking out at her from the cathedral shadow.

“I don’t believe you.” Bells rang.

“Maybe,
you should try to.” And he left after that.

Twenty hours, three minutes, fourteen seconds, and five heartbeats later, he died. At the top of a beautiful hill in Spain, he looked out to painted plains of vines. Each color, a different grape. Every mound a beauty. His heart gave way to the dancing winds at the peak of his life.

His experience was perfect. His words were perfect. Everything was a movie. Except his heart. Skinny boy, cholesterol that snuck up on him like a silent demon, and stress from all the budding love.

Heart fluttering to a peaceful stop. “You’re somebody to me.”

<><><><><>

God is a woman.

God cries in waves.

God picked Lobo up by the tail.

God smiled.

God had a dream of painted plains too.

God shared Lobo with the plains.

And so, he lived again.

<><><><><>

The top of a hill, heat on the eyelids and sweat between the toes, painted all around.
Flashes of pink and aqua and emerald and, and, and so much more. His big gold eyes spun around the world.

“Look at him!”

“Dancing, like a fool!”

“He mocks us!”

“Let’s rope him!”

“I’m too hungry to wait for this to end!”

“He must be the idiot!”

“Village idiot!”

“He would make a fine meal!”

“For the Mother!”

“For my horses!”

Walking between the streaming beasts came a woman.
She raised her hand, and the storm of horses drifted to a halt.

Her figure. In the light of three stars, she parted the furs around her body. A spear was revealed, transforming from a feather to a pole-weapon.
INTENSE BLUE-EYE STARE
NO DILATION

“This boy,” she shouted, “is indeed the village idiot.”
And her men laughed wildly with their reins in hand. Their robes were decorated with the jewels of the plains, and took on their colors.

The painted men reminded Lobo of his nakedness. The dancing winds chilled him to the bone. With a brutal metal now being aimed at the ball of his throat, he felt vulnerable and afraid.

“I have use for a fool.” She smirked. “But he is a pretty boy. Maybe, he can entertain me.”

“But should he fail,” the men hollered and yelled in excitement as she began her proclamation,
“to keep my attention, I will bury him…”

HIS GOLD EYES WIDENED
“...along with all of his invisible people.”

Ropes were thrown from across the plateau field, and each found Lobo’s neck.

“Luna!”

“The Great Khan!”

“A fool for the Khan!”

She walked away, her robes being the only without a color. Except. Except for red.

Luna menaced all vision with wild, fiery hair. Her robes were tinged with red and black colors. Her image was that of a blaze itself. And maybe she really was as dangerous as a wicked flame.

She looked back at Lobo from afar. Her smirk turned to nothing. She analyzed him. Lobo’s face showed fear, but she could see beyond it.

Lobo feared nothing. He was dead inside. Dead and without spirit.

<><><><><>

Pulled and dragged, his body let out the noises of a captive animal.

They would domesticate him.
He would become a slave.
Everything about Lobo would belong to Luna.

They used his feet to position him beside a pole.

They tied his wrists up.

He was raised.

Lobo could only see the tents of thousands, and thousands of people. This life he flew into after death seemed to be majestic and mysterious. He smiled outwardly in the first show of spirit since his revival.

“I, am alive again?” Spectators jeered with mouths wide open. The fool finally speaks.
GOLD EYES DILATED

“I am alive.” He came to be aware. Like a child just born, and a toddler in their first years, his memories had not yet found a place in space or time.

He could be anywhere in the universe or universes.

Lobo’s mind finally understood the position of his body and soul.

A faraway place, a distant world. This was not home. Three stars set on the horizon behind him. He could see the shadows splice across the bodies of the horse people. In the eyes of all those people, excitement.

The boy looked for Luna as leather straps were thrown around the pole. Lobo was tied across his body, to keep him still.

In the back of the crowd, he could see the red hair dancing. Luna was just a girl. A pretty girl in ragged clothes. Back home, she could ignore him on the way to work.

In a line for coffee, Lobo could try to get her attention. She would look back in disappointment. Another match not meant to be.

In his mind, he was inadequate for such a beautiful female.

Attraction from first sight began to pour around Lobo’s mind.

When Luna walked up the wooden stage with a pole in her hand, he tried to let the attraction sink into the ground.

His beaten face, as soil filled his wounds, looked between bruises at the girl’s tool.

A spike, red and hot, with a swirl at the end. A spiral.

“I am alive,” Lobo whispered as the girl finally looked into his eyes. “I know I am.”

He smiled warmly as the iron rod touched his skin.

“Alive…”
HER BLUE EYES DILATED
“… and mine!”

Lobo howled into the beginning night. The stars watched his skin burn under the heat. A scar was born on the right side of his chest. So was a slave.

In the middle of the act, he could see Luna’s eyes sparkle for him.

Something about a boy who smiled in a confrontation with pain. It made her think about him. He noticed this before passing out, wrists keeping his body up.

His head slumped to the side. The last thing he saw was the branding iron jump off his body. The people cheered too.

Lobo, the fool with the spiral scar, became Luna’s pretty-boy slave.