could not stop for death
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up, up and away / iliyon
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centuries each feel shorter than the day.
“Rising out of the water, eyes like sandbanks.”

Séadan was born into complication. His mother died in childbirth and it was his uncle who came to adopt him. Angry, hurt and still caught in a thunderous rage about whomever Séadan's father really was, Steve took the newborn into his arms and knew that it was their job to take on this responsibility. Blessed as their life was, Lindsay was relieved to hear her husband be so willing to take on the tragedy of her baby sister and in no time, he became theirs: Séadan Mcinnis, because his mother and her ran-off-to-America ways had wanted to name her son Séadan. It was their honor to her, a broken hearted girl who couldn't make it through with the rest of her life. The early years are blurry, at best, with Séadan's older brother Séamus (James) found it difficult to welcome him with ease it turned out, but Séadan hardly remembers a difficulty between them. A tremble of fear, yes, but he still chalks it up to their age difference more than he might anything else life has to offer. Things, for a boy who could have had nothing, were far too good in his life for him to ever question for more.

The good came early. With his birthday in the Spring it was easier to start school early; Séadan was enrolled in Gaelscoil because the family was bound right well to their heritage and though Séadan was less Irish by blood than they, he could make up for it with learning. And learn he did. The smallest and one of the youngest, Séadan spent his primary years learning gaelic and balancing it properly against the casual English he had to speak at home and with the community. By second class he was already on the swimming team and balancing it with art classes after school on Wednesdays and Thursdays. A full little schedule for the little McInnis but it kept the family looking good and Séadan, he wanted it. He needed it, really, because occupied at class meant less time being awkward at home.

And awkward was the only way to describe it. While Séamus was almost always ready to take his brother out through Cork it wasn't an easy task. His would-be baby brother was far more prone to staying at home and helping with plants, or playing with building blocks, than trying to rough house it outside. It certainly didn't help that the few times Séadan went out with Séamus it ended up in some kind of nightmare or injury; Sémus was great at making up stories, at talking people into doing things, and they often resulted in Séadan or someone else falling over, or out of, something. So clubs it was. Clubs and clinging to his mother's leg and showing his father whatever he'd made that day.

Not until secondary school did things begin to happen for Séadan. Coláiste na Toirbhirte may very well be the best school in all of Cork or any neighboring towns but it was absolute shite for art. The fortune of the family gave Séadan a shot to do other things: comic courses after school, animation weeks, even getting to help paint a mural for one of the festivals in the summer. And it gave Séadan a friend, a good, good friend. Airlie was at PBC Cork for one reason and one reason only: rugby. But he and Séadan met in their maths course and Séadan found himself too fascinated by the smile to ignore him. They began to take to lessons together after school, with Airlie coming over or Séadan going to his, helping one another and playing around. Airlie introduced Séadan to his friends and Séadan introduced Airlie to the fun of a homebody. Which ended up including sneaking into wine and liquor cabinets, puzzles and movies until late hours and, eventually, somehow making out.

The first time was a laugh. A joke, really, with a beer in Airlie's hand and Séadan having to take a gulp of air to gather courage enough to follow through. More ha, see, I can kiss than what it lead to — a relationship that lasted for longer than either could have guessed it. The memories built: skinny dipping together, driving with friends through late nights, trying to sneak in and out of one another's homes, the time Airlie's mother caught them with Séadan's hand in his pants. The time Steve came home too early and Séadan had to try to meet him before he got to the room and found Airlie shoving a pillow down over his crotch. It was all a spiral to trying, trying to make things bigger, trying to live like some rugby child with his too-strange boyfriend. And eventually, it bit them in the ass.

At sixteen, when Airlie was already on his way toward eighteen, Séadan got to see a party go wrong in the worst of ways. While it'd been almost common place to pop a pill or snort something together, someone bought in a new test of cocaine that was going around Dublin and other places. Whatever time passed between trying and death is lost to Séadan these days. He remembers it in glimpses, in kisses and hands roaming, in music that has no lyrics anymore, and then Airlie shaking like a poison had hit his heart. The panic was overwhelming and instant, a torture in and of itself, as Airlie's heart reached for the last image of beauty it knew.

In Séadan, the Banshee found a home. His Requite opened to stories and fables and suddenly he and Airlie were alone in open fields as the boy fell toward death and Séadan got to kiss him with a song in his mouth, all the kindness of goodbye. Then they were there again at the party and the sirens were blaring and things went strange. For three days and three nights, Sé slept, caught in a brief coma that no one could explain away or understand. When he spoke, it was soundless. Without a chance to speak, Séadan was considered mute from trauma. The next few weeks were just to finish out the year and everyone urged for Séadan to take a transition year and fix himself, especially with his new found training underway. But he didn't; he could handle it, he supposed.

But then that August, in Dublin, training went odd. They finally got Séadan to speak a sound aloud and out of frustration, he groaned. The effect of it was more than he could have thought, as tables went flying and his trainers knocked back on the ground. So, talking was off the table, and that was an odd thing: but they came to realize after a few sessions that everyone was simple letting Séadan slip by because they all wanted to make him happy. They wanted to make him feel good. Work became a heavy enough burden but still, he persisted, completely incapable of stopping because staying... staying got too hard. The only salvation was his art in trying to cope, with no voice and no chance of running away.

“Of three nights and three days, crescent lights.”

Pratt University had been a far off goal. Get as far from Cork as imaginable, escape, then make sense. Brooklyn, New York with new trainers, foreign ideas, strange people. Things were new, unique, odd and yet, Séadan found his pacing. Finding a place with a few roommates was kind, and with class interpretors who were willing to speak on his behalf things weren't the worst. Having professors and classmates always trying to grab at him or make moves was and, for the most part, he never spent a night completely alone when a roommate suddenly wandered in for praise and salvation. The training began to make it a little easier to remove himself from it, to give them new thoughts, desires, places to focus on and Séadan, he got to learn. Really learn. The figures lessons did him best, gave him layers in structure, in person, in translating the thousand screams a second into something that still looked like a whole person.

Social habits learned from Airlie came in handy, too. A mute wasn't nearly as incapable of living as most handicaps of the world and Séadan took well advantage of it. Helping a few people put together shows for themselves, even getting to attend the graduation ceremonies to watch exhibitions and meet the right connections worldwide. It was in November of his second year that Séadan met the niece of a writer for DC Comics who needed some help with touch ups and mock designs. Séadan took the job not because the money was necessary — money has hardly ever been a concern and Séadan is thankful for that — but because anyone who thought his sketches were good enough to be worth paying toward felt amazing. And in a few months of steadier off hand work, Séadan landed his first few jobs doing alternate covers with the company, and some smaller companies in the industry.

Work, work was a real thing to focus on. He could pour all of himself into it, let the shades become shadows of doubt, let the figures speak a thousand gestures he would never be able to vocalize. The idea of class became less and less prominent; he paid attention to his lessons, he went to his courses, but by the time he started to consider a future within Pratt things began to seem dark. The dismay of those who were caught in his casual hypnotism lead to a final farewell, leaving the school after his fourth term because it just didn't fit right anymore. But as he left, Séadan was met with a few new offers. More than work. More than sketches and colors on books of paper people were reading stories through.

An offer to join an exhibition on printmaking at SoHo20. A part of an exhibition that would be a launching pad for a trajectory that even a few of the voices in Séadan's head were to be surprised by. The exhibition sold out and all the artists involved celebrated, some harder than others, while the work began to make sense. Séadan moved from it to character studies, two exhibitions in the summer of 2012 — one as one of the last showings at the Shore Institute for Contemporary Art and the other at the Silvermine Arts Center. The name Séadan McInnis began to grow within the industry and it was just in time, too; Séadan began to find how difficult it was to feel accomplished while at these exhibits, the charm of his being possibly influencing sales more than it should have.

Florence Beaumont was a foreign agent who liked to peruse through the New York and San Francisco art scenes for new talents. What she saw in Séadan's art he still isn't completely sure, but she came to him in a rush already, sure she could make him huge, sure she could help him. The trouble was working on things, trying to get some medium between being there and being away. Give her some time, she promised, and she'd make sure Séadan could be as reclusive as he'd always dreamed of while steady work continued to pour in. And she made good on getting him steady work, too, rounding out two more exhibitions that fall where Séadan was the focus and sole provider of pieces to both the Scion Installation Space and the Low Brow Artique.

It was Low Brow that disrupted the whole of life in an odd way. While Séadan had to hide away amid the crowd and mingle as the night went on, he ran into someone strange, an older man who looked at him not with desire but a static noise that Séadan couldn't ignore. In a flash he lost his footing and collapsed, his head overrun with more voices than he could manage at once; Florence had him taken into a private room and wove some story he couldn't hear because when Séadan opened his eyes he was no longer in New York at all. He was in Áire and looking at a phantom of his mother. It wasn't the first time she'd stood out amongst the noise, not since the accident, but it was the first time Séadan had run into her with a look of worry.

That was your father.

A simple phrase and the mood broke, shattered as Séadan gasped and the door knocked open like a strong wind had moved through the gallery. When he approached Derek it was in an odd frenzy and the lack of voice caused the man to turn away. Séadan tried to speak to him in the only other way he had available and the brief glimpse into Derek's mind was more than Séadan ever wanted to know about him, about who made him. Embarrassing as the whole ordeal was, it was dealt with, money made and gallery satisfied as Séadan booked a ticket back to Ireland to erase everything and welcome the new year with his family. With parents, who weren't twisted and angry.

Returning was an experience. Where Séadan expected some kind of lament or recoil, his family welcomed him; even Séamus was supportive, telling him like their parents that he could do whatever he felt necessary, whatever provided happiness. If that meant sitting in his room for life and drawing, so be it. It wasn't exactly what Séadan wanted out of his days and Florence likely wouldn't have it but it was a comfort. Comfort enough that when Lindsay was given an offer to travel abroad for a few months, Séadan went with her. Gallery Factory was offering him a month long exhibition to start with and he could have a few pieces put on auction through Seoul Auction; it was a good enough reason to cling to mother's leg the way he had as a child. It certainly helped that his paintings were getting more and more traction, as well, seeing as death was abundant in the world and the voices were never ending.

Getting to know people did get easier, however, with training getting Séadan's thoughts to shift his image unless he was actively using his gifts or too tired to fight off the glamour of his faery flesh. The art was an escape for him and the escape was welcomed by the public. It made Korea feel friendly, feel kind, and like in New York Séadan stole himself away for a day to wander toward the water and try to make himself at home. Unlike back in Á or New York, the water wasn't all too welcoming, almost distracted and pulled away. It was probably a bit silly but frustration took hold as Séadan grabbed at a stick to smack the water into paying better attention, rather than using magic he knew would drain him to draw off of.

The King of the water rose out and, well. He was a bit startling. And breathtaking. And almost completely Séadan's type. Even deaf, like some counterweight to the balance of Séadan's mute nature; they spent the afternoon communicating with thoughts and hands through water, through air, until Séadan was going back to the home his mother was renting for their stay just to paint more. Out came a pour of vivid, new shades that Séadan had never been able to make a home out of in his thoughts, blush against his cheeks as shades of shy bloomed against a canvas. The pain still resided, would never go away, but it certainly seemed nicer in the middle of stray thoughts with a boy from far away.

Luck changed around. Whatever magic Jonghwa had turned the blessings into true woven gold at the end of a rainbow. Séadan began to get nominations, awards, for his work instead of just money and gifts; his comics flourished and his portraits continued to sell much to Florence's delight. Years later, he's her best client, bringing in more money annually than several others combined and she couldn't be happier with his choices to stay away, to seperate from it all instead of meddling with whatever marketing and structure she chooses to string together for him. And Jonghwa, well, after some time spent seperated and in touch Séadan made his way back to Korea, to Jeju, on a half promise that he'd end up waking in Jonghwa's bed with breakfast waiting downstairs.

And with rings on their fingers these days, the promise is still kept.

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