always and forever is forever young
your shadow on the pavement, the dark side of the sun
Mallos wasn’t really familiar with exhaustion. His sleep patterns had always been irregular, erratic, tiredness masked by the unpredictable energy to which he was prone. He had definitely lost a night here or there to some unputdownable project and barely noticed, animated by hyperactivity, hyperfocus or magic. Divinity was an automatic supplement to any minor dip below eight hours.

Even divinity was struggling at the end of a fortnight of no more than a single hour’s sleep at a time.

Having lost the freedom to bed when he wanted to, the very things which had stopped him feeling sleep deprivation before – activity, focus – now significantly contributed to it. Unfinished thoughts and projects kept him up at night even when he and Croe finally managed to get the baby to sleep. Unemployment and confinement between four small walls made it hard to stay in one place for more than a few seconds. He needed to be moving – thinking – doing, even when his hands shook and his vision blurred. It would have been difficult enough to cope if the little angel would cooperate once in a while, but she seemed to have made it her mission to be as trying as possible. She screamed if she was placed in her cot. She screamed if she was picked up by a nurse or nanny. She screamed if she wasn’t being held, at all times, without fail, by mum or dad.

A few times they’d managed to rock her to sleep and then gently placed her in the cot, but she’d always woken up within minutes and screamed.

It was Croe’s turn for a break. Mallos had brought Angela up to his quarters some hours before and had tried with increasing desperation to get her to perform the same peaceful, recumbent activity which her mother was no doubt engaging in at the time. Her eyes had been closed for about fifteen minutes now, rocked to sleep gently in his arms. Had it been long enough?

Carefully, slowly, Mallos leant over the hastily erected crib in his bedroom. He started to lower her down but she hadn’t even touched the bottom before she opened one black eye and glared suspiciously at him. He hastily stood up straight again before her lip could do the tell-tale wobble.

It took another forty minutes of rocking and singing and begging before she closed her eyes again. Mallos sat back on the bed, drawing his legs up under him, and leant back against the pillows. He was out of it before he’d even had time to consider the possibility of sleep.

He wasn’t sure how long he was out for, but it didn’t feel like he’d broken the sixty-minute record of the last two weeks. Waking up, as always these days, was physically and emotionally painful. Consciousness arrived in a sharp burst, like being stabbed, the after-pain lingering while his brain caught up with the idea of being awake. The first thing he was aware of was his own exhaustion, all-encompassing, a never-ending protest from every cell in his body. The second thing he was aware of was his daughter, Angela, lying against his chest with his shirt clutched between her tiny, perfect fingers, still sound asleep. The third was Tristan.

“Hola,” he muttered, beyond being able to translate English. There was another delay before he noticed the state of the room. A small frown – one of mild ire rather than surprise – creased his brow. “Get out of here,” he told the papers and the drawing pins, still in his native tongue.

For a moment, it didn’t seem like the misbehaving stationary would be inclined to obey. A crumpled up paper rolled thoughtfully across the floor while the drawing pins twitched. After a moment or two, they all marched resignedly back out into the office. The shirt followed them; Mallos didn’t bother asking it to come back and hang itself up in the wardrobe.

“What’s up, Tristan?” He asked in Spanish, rubbing the corner of his eye.


i can feel you in the silence saying, “let forever be,
love, and only love, will set you free.”