If You Hate My Long Titles, Don’t Blame Me, Blame Fall Out Boy
“So where does Cowell go? When he just kinda... takes off?” Cindy asks Flora one day, as they’re cleaning tables in The Smiling Goat.
Flora just scoffs. “Beats the shit out of me.” She shrugs, shaking her head. “There’s a lot of other Smiling Goats around. ‘It’s a franchise, you know!’”
Cindy chuckles at the impression.
“He probably goes off to check on those, I ‘spose. Though I wish he’d give me more warning when he’s leaving.”
“Hullo all!” A familiar voice rings out from the doorway, and both women tense slightly.
“Or when he’s coming back.”
Cowell loafs in, grinning in that unnerving way of his. He pauses once he takes a few steps in, glancing back and forth between the two of them. “Are we upset at me again?”
“Of course.”
“What for this time?”
“Just the usual,” Cindy sighs. “We never know when you’re going to be here or when you’re going to be gone.”
Cowell chuckles, placing the box he’s been carrying gently behind the counter. “Well that’s not very fair now, is it?” He spins around, leaning back towards them. “Cindy comes and goes as she pleases.”
Flora puts her hands on her hips. “But she always gives notice.”
“Well I never really know when I’ll be back, do I? Duty calls, after all.”
“What duty? To all the regulars across the cosmos?” Flora is actually getting a little frustrated by now, as most are wont to do when Cowell is involved.
But he just smiles, as he always does. “Something like that.”
And there is nothing more said about it. Flora has known him for many years, way longer than she has ever wanted or intended to. In all that time, he has never given her a straight answer. Not for want of trying of course. Eventually she gave up, Kuro didn’t understand her nosiness, so she thought that maybe it was a her problem. But now that Cindy’s here, the flame has risen once again.
Cowell doesn’t begrudge her this. She has a right to know as his manager, even if he’ll never tell her. It is true, a lot of what he does is check in on his various bars, pubs, speakeasies, and sake carts across the cosmos. To anyone else, the pattern may seem entirely random. In reality, it is anything but.
He is always exactly where he needs to be.
Wherever there’s a deal to be made, a story to be told, he is there. He has been to many places, and will be to many more in the future. Some of the places he’s been don’t even exist anymore, or won’t exist for a very long time yet. Time is odd in the cosmos. It doesn’t work right, but he’s a master of weaving through it.
He is absolutely everywhere he needs to be, without fail. He considers it a skill of his. Omnipresence. It infuriates everyone around him and amuses him to no end. They laugh about it together, sometimes.
To anyone else, Cowell is playing. But in reality, he’s working. He’s always working, really. He practically never stops. Someone needs to keep the sand in the box, after all, because those who are playing in it sure don’t seem to be interested in maintaining it themselves. And so he does, back and forth, story to story, world to world. He is always there. Always ready to push or pull in just the right direction.
It used to be very mechanical to him. Cause to effect and back again. He just needs to say the right thing, give the right amount of information. But over time, his thought process has changed. He is on the outside of everything, looking in. He knows this, of course, and nothing will ever change that. He blends effortlessly into every setting, but truly belongs nowhere.
Yet the more time he has spent, seeing places, meeting people, he has softened somewhat, he supposes. The more tragedies he has seen, the more real it all seems to him. The lumps of sand in the box are not just that. They are people, they have lives. They matter to each other. And to a lot of others. He isn’t just working anymore, he’s helping.
A vision is meant to be achieved, and it is his pleasure to help it along. Because in the process, he can help everyone else. He did/does/will do a lot of evil. He has led many people along the path of destruction, or at the very least waved to them on their way down. But every once in a while, he gets the chance to do something good, something right.
And that is where he goes. That is what he is doing. Flora may hate it, but she wouldn’t understand. None of them would. There is only one person who does.
There is one more place he goes. In between the bars and the stories and the many many worlds that spin throughout the cosmos. Deep down, in the dark, in the very center of the Other, of everything, there is a room. Its walls drip with condensation down the cracked stones, the hiss of the occasional lamp the only sound to break the silence.
In the center of this room is a cell. The bars are thick, and tight together, barely wide enough to fit a single hand through. Most would wonder why it is needed at all, as its occupant is in no fit state to escape, nor would they want to. It’s to prevent everything else from getting in.
Only three know of this place, and Cowell is one of them. He is the only one who comes here anymore, anyway. But he does. Whenever he has a spare moment, that is his destination.
Because She is waiting for him there, always waiting for him to come back, and tell Her another story.
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