She tells her love while half asleep,
In the dark hours,
With half words whispered low;
As earth stirs in her winter sleep
And puts out grass and flowers
Despite the snow,
Despite the falling snow.
      -- Robert Graves

She leans over a bar in Las Vegas, holding a cigarette. Her hair is dark like mysteries and her eyes are clear pale blue like the way a cloudless sky looks on the morning of the winter solstice. "Do you have a light?" she asks, just a bare breath of sound against her carmine-stained lips, and Lance shakes his head and mutters some soft negation. She drops her eyes and thanks him anyway. Lance forgets her before he's even finished turning back to the conversation he was having,

and --

JC feels as though he knows her, as though he's seen her before, from the moment his eyes alight on her. She's tiny and built the way a real woman is built, and her hair falls across her face as she turns her head to survey the crowded club, looking for someone or something. He sips his Rumpleminz and Sprite and feels the lemon/lime/peppermint explode over the back of his tongue. When she catches his eye, her lips round in a smile for half a moment. She mouths some words that he can't hear, lost against the wave of German techno music that reaches down into his skin and tries to pull him loose

and --

"Are you having weird dreams, or is it just me?" Justin mumbles, dragging a hand over his head, catching his fingers in the curls. Something in the corner of his eyes reminds Trace of gathering up weeds and burning them in a drum in the corner of the yard, the way that the flames leap up and dance against the edges. Justin studies Trace's face like there might answers written there. Trace reaches out a hand to touch Justin's cheekbones. Justin's skin feels paper-thin, like everything right underneath it is just waiting for a way to push through. Justin licks his lips. "I keep dreaming that things are on fire. And there's a woman dancing." Trace shakes his head,

and --

(once upon a time so long ago that she can barely remember how it feels even though it was just yesterday she leaned over into the poet's ear and whispered and he woke and reached for the pen that he kept on the bedside table and scratched down the words before they could leave him and when it's done he closes his eyes and wishes he could hear her again just once more now that it's over)

and --

It's three in the morning. Bri can't sleep from all the fussing, so Joey puts her in the carseat. Chris swears up and down that colicky babies quiet right down if the car is moving, and damned if he isn't generally right, but not tonight. Joey sings to her in the car as they drive, and it's a sign of just how much distress she's in that she doesn't quiet and still to listen to Daddy's voice crooning to her. Daddy, Joey thinks, and it still has the power to shake him. He stops for gas and heads inside to the convenience store to pick up a cup of coffee so that he doesn't fall asleep on the road, tucking Bri under one arm and bringing her along with him. There's a woman standing in front of the soda case, dark-haired and perhaps chest-height on him and curved in all the right places. She's just the sort that Joey would have hit on not two years ago, but now all he does is murmur an excuse-me. Bri lets out a long thin hiccuping wail again. "Oh," the woman says, soft and sympathetic, and presses a hand against Bri's baby cheek before Joey can stop her. He doesn't like strangers touching his daughter. "Hush, little one," she says, and Bri quiets instantly. "There's no need to fuss. You're loved, and you will have the fire, and you will always be blessed." Joey frowns, and then looks down at his daughter, and then looks back up at the woman, but she only gives him a smile and turns to stride out of the store, and by the time he pays for his coffee he's already forgotten her,

and --

The sun is hot and the costumes they have to wear are nowhere near light-weight enough but Chris doesn't care, because it's a microphone and an audience and that's always been enough for him, and anyway, the park management is good at providing them water for when they finish their set. He takes a deep breath and floats the high note, and when he opens his eyes again, the fat guy in the badly tailored suit is standing there listening again. A woman in cut-off denim shorts and a worn-looking white tank top is standing by his side, standing on her toes to whisper something into his ear. Something about her is familiar, but he can't take the time to think about it. By the time he's done with his set they're both gone,

and --

Lance presses his fingertips against his eyes, like he has a headache and can't get rid of it. "How the hell do you do this?" It's a little sharp, a little edged; he's frustrated with himself and more than a little ready to just throw in the towel. Except he can't; it's in him and he doesn't know how to get it out and he doesn't know how JC lives with it.

JC frowns. "Do what?"

Lance throws his pencil down on the paper. "Write songs like you do. I swear, I just can't do this."

"It's okay, Lance. You don't need to force it if you don't want to. I mean, I know you wanted to sort of get into some writing for this next album, but if it's not coming, it's not coming, and you shouldn't try to force it, it's like, bad for the flow --"

"Jayce." Lance flexes his fingers around each other and wonders how many ways he can intertwine them before he starts knotting them together. It's easier than looking up. "The problem isn't that it's not flowing. The problem is that it's -- I can't stop hearing it. I can't stop breathing it. It's like -- I'm a radio receiver that's tuned into the frequency, and it's scaring the hell out of me."

JC leans over and lets his hand close over Lance's wrist. "You found the music," he says, softly. "Don't shut it off. You'll get used to it soon."

The staff paper under his pencil is covered in eraser shavings that keep tipping in between the keys of the keyboard, because he can't get it right, but maybe JC knows what he's talking about,

and --

Justin hasn't slept in three days and hasn't come out of his bedroom for two of them. Chris wants to leave, because the tour is over and the hiatus is officially on, dammit, but they've got a fucking boyband code of honor or some shit like that and part of that is babysitting your neurotic best friend when he's on a fucking creativity bender, holed up to write an entire damn album. If Chris didn't know better, doesn't hear the keyboards and the guitar and occasionally a long vocal line held and sustained and changing ever so slightly each time, he'd think that Justin had finally given up and passed out.

It's the third day when Justin emerges. Chris has gone through all of Justin's DVDs and gotten tired of the X-Box, so he's napping on the couch when Justin clears his throat. Chris sits up just enough to look over the back of the couch. Justin stands in the doorway, and it's like he's crackling with it, with something that Chris can't define or explain. His clothes are rumpled, and there's a little strip of stubble down his cheek where he missed with the razor. "I've got it," Justin says. "It still needs work, I need to give it to the guys I'm working with and see what they want to do with their part of it, but that's it, I've got it. All of it."

Chris knows the way he feels after one of those marathons, bare and empty and broken-husk waiting to sweep away on the wind. "Sleep now," he says.

Justin throws back his head and laughs. "Sleep? I don't need sleep. I may never need to sleep ever again. I feel like a fucking god right now."

"Guess you really found your groove."

There's a smile playing around Justin's lips. Chris looks at him and remembers all the nights when Justin would wake up from the dreams, biting back the screaming because he didn't want to wake anyone else on the bus, and get up to write until the sun rose. He thinks that okay, maybe not sleeping is probably safer for Justin right about now

and --

(they used to sing hymns to her, full choruses of eighty and ninety voices at once, complicated harmonies that rang so sweetly in her ears. they used to bring her flowers, and leave them in her home, sacrifices of beauty preserved just at its prime. young men and women used to fall to their knees in her courtyards, overcome by the sense of her presence. once a year she would open the doors between where she was and where they waited for her, and there would be dancing and singing and beauty. and then it all slipped away, so slowly that she didn't notice, until she opened the doorway and could not find it again once it closed behind her. no one now remembers her name save in old stories. no one lays flowers for her, or remembers the old hymns, the old dances. now, she is lucky if she is remembered past when she turns away. but the dreams -- oh, the dreams are still there, the dreams will always be there)

and --

Joey is napping with his head in JC's lap. He can feel the change, even though JC doesn't move beyond a subtle and tiny shifting of muscles. It's as though he becomes still, receptive, open, listening with his whole body to something that Joey can't hear.

"Oh," JC says, a little startled soft noise. There's clarity there, a sudden and complete understanding, and a deep and abiding wonder. "Yes. Yes. Thank you." He slides out from under Joey, as gently as he can without disturbing Joey too much, and Joey drifts off to the sound of JC humming under his breath and scribbling frantically in his notebook. He wonders sometimes what JC hears when he gets that look in his eye

and --

The reporter is one of the types they thought they'd never have to deal with ever again, one of the types who disdains pop music and sneers down her nose anytime they say something that indicates that they're anything other than a pre-fab, manufactured band. Justin was hoping that Justified and Schizophrenic had given the critics enough ammunition to actually think of them as legitimate artists, but apparently this reporter missed the memo; she seems startled and slightly disgusted every time one of them makes it a point of saying that they're doing this album their own way, on their own terms.

JC is halfway through one of his long speeches on creativity and teamwork, and how it was wonderful to make music on his own but it's just as wonderful coming home to be back working with the guys again, when she interrupts him. "So this album, you wrote all of it yourselves?"

Lance, smooth as silk, slides in to cut JC off before he can go off on a tangent. "We wrote the lyrics and the music. Collaborated with a few people on the production for some of the songs, people we've worked with before either individually or as a group, but for the most part, it was just us."

She taps her pen against her notebook; she has a small tape recorder with her, but nearly every reporter that they've ever talked to has clung to that small remnant of the old way of doing things. "How do you get your ideas?"

They aren't quite back into the swing of things, of handling reporters like the well-oiled machine that they were by the time that fate and circumstance conspired to give them some time off, so there's a quick second where all of them simultaneously try to meet each other's eyes -- a quick "who's gonna field this one" passed around the room right under the reporter's oblivious gaze. Justin can see it in all of them, the impulse to give an honest answer to the question. He knows them all well enough that he could answer for them, answer for each of them, and knows that they know the same of him.

For Joey it's warm and steady and whole, like a flower opening in the sun. He wakes up one morning and it's there, patiently waiting for him to take the time and appreciate its beauty. Chris's inspiration is like a breath of breeze or a gust of hurricane, sweeping in when he's not expecting it and ruffling through his life until he throws up his hands and puts it to paper. Lance feels it like a river, like water trickling free of its source or rushing through him like it's going to let him drown, and he always struggles against his first impulse to dam it up and tuck it away. Justin himself always gets it like a brushfire, roaring in and filling up his mind and his ears and his fingers until it's ready to consume him and leave nothing but an empty, ashen husk.

JC never talks about it, except to say "every artist needs a muse," and something about the look in his eye always makes Justin think of the woman in his dreams, with her long black hair and her cafe-au-lait skin, dancing to a barely-perceptable tribal beat while the world burns around her.

"All sorts of places," Justin says. "There's a song in everything, if you just look with the right eyes."

and --

Once upon a time she was a goddess, so long ago by the way that humans reckon time that none of her temples are still standing brick on brick. So many of her brothers and sisters have given up, faded into nothingness and the mists of memory, with no one left to worship them and no one remaining who can still speak their secret names. She will not follow them. She is no longer the beloved of an entire people, and everything great will one day pass to dust and time. She is cramped and tight in this imitation of a mortal body that she wears because no human could stand to look at her true form -- not anymore, not in this world where reason and rationality hold sway. But there are those still who hear her voice when she whispers her gifts in their ears; they hear her, and they believe in her, and their faith (even if they do not know what it is in which they believe) leaves her with just enough power to bless them in return. She will wait. She is patient. Someday, some of them will see her and know her, not just in dreams but when they cross paths in the waking world. She will wait. The spark of the divine in man is not dead; it is only sleeping, and every sleeper must someday wake.

and --

The album spends thirty-two weeks at number one.

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