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 Posted: Fri Jul 05, 2013 3:22 pm
Things That Matter
Word Count -- 1460
It was the dead of winter, and Acubens was wearing nothing but her fuku. She would probably end up sick from this, but it didn’t really matter to her. What mattered was the steady sinking of her body through the melting snow. What mattered was the slow seeping of cold water into the fabric of her fuku, warming against her flesh. What mattered was the random, happy twinkling of the stars above her. Which one was hers? Could she pick it out? Was cancer even visible this time of year? It didn’t matter. She let the questions float from her mind, anchoring herself in the aching chill of winter against her unprotected body.
She couldn’t feel her fingers anymore.
It didn’t matter.
What mattered, right then, in that moment, was the wind that swept like ice across Acubens’ prone body. What mattered was her hair that plastered itself to her skull as the melting snow soaked it.
Little things in the world around her mattered, like the popping of branches in the bitter cold, and the feeling of the air like it might snow again. Not that chaos signature that passed by, paused to feel her out, and, inferring that she must be injured or at least no threat, kept on walking. Not the eyelash that had strayed into Acubens’ eye and burned just slightly so as to be annoying, though not dire.
Not even the conflict roiling in Acubens’ stomach, invading her dreams and thought mattered.
Misha had said that when it came down to it, Acubens had two options; to corrupt or not. And he’d made it sound so simple. But the ramifications would reach beyond just her. She would die and a new woman would go walking away from her wreckage. Did that matter? Did Micah matter? Of course, she must have mattered to someone, her mother and her father, of course. And Misha. Millie too. And Jett. She mattered to them, but how much?
She was her mother and father’s only daughter, so she mattered on a procreation-based level to them. No parent should have to bury their child; that was not the way things went. The old die and the young inherit their place. That was the way things went. And they went that way to further the species, and the cycle would repeat itself as time went by. But on a more personal note, Acubens’ mother and father loved her very much. They made a point to tell her. So the loss of Micah would devastate them to their core, of course. They know every facet and erratic dimension of Micah’s personality. And, somehow, they still loved her. So that mattered.
And then there was Misha. He was everything Micah wasn’t; calm, sociable, detail oriented, careful. They didn’t work well on their own. Micah would spend forever dreaming if Misha didn’t set her to work and Misha would have nothing to implement were it not for Micah’s ideas. Misha would lose track of the big picture and Micah would get lost in the vastness of such things. Misha would never get anything done and Micah would never let herself relax. The half cannot survive without the other half. And besides that, Misha had never been without her, not really. They were devoted to one another; a closeness that had instigated more than a few nasty rumors. And again, Misha was the one to convince Micah to let it roll off of her instead of getting into a fight. So that mattered.
Millie and Jett… they were kind of a grey area. Though not bound by blood, for some reason they stayed with Acubens. Millie was one of Acubens very good friends, maybe the best she’s ever had. And Lenka was her mentor as a senshi. So for all intents and purposes, Millie and Lenka were both Acubens’ sister. But did that matter? For all her mentoring and training, Acubens could still not get a grasp on herself as senshi. So did the training even matter? And Jett, he was her boxing instructor, but clearly she wasn’t a very good student. She couldn’t translate his teachings over to where she so desperately needed it. So did that training matter at all either? If it did matter, then it would have worked. Acubens would know what to do when she powered up, she wouldn’t just be floating in the nebulous uncertainty. But then what about how Millie cared for her? Did that matter at all? Certainly it helped ground her, but only when she was powered down. Normalcy felt so… fictional when Acubens donned her mantel. Shouldn’t her bond with Millie have centered her no matter what? So did that relationship matter?
And for that matter, did Misha and her parents’ love matter? Certainly those should have centered her was well. She could focus her erratic nature on those she loved and find purpose in that. But she wasn’t. So was it their love or hers that didn’t matter? Maybe was it both? Her parents weren’t asking where she went at night, but she was 18 and they were fairly permissive. Maybe they thought that she was going out with friends. So her absence didn’t matter. Would her permanent absence then matter more? Rationally, she knew it would, he was their daughter but… what did that matter? She was an offspring. A perfect blending of two genetic beings split off into two separate entities; her and her twin brother. So if there was a copy then, surely, they could cope.
Would it have been different if she were an only child? Would her absence mattered more?
Here she was talking like she’d made the decision to corrupt already. Like now she was just signing paperwork, the footwork having been done. Like her choices didn’t even matter. Well… did they? Could she change the tides of the fate that seemed to draw her more and more into the Mirror?
Changing fate was one thing, but could she change herself? It wasn’t like she was exactly raging against this pull. She was just afraid of losing those she loved. Not the corruption itself, rather the loss of identity.
Did those she love identify her?
Yes. She supposed they did. She was Marcia’s daughter, Micah. She was Grayson’s little girl. She was Misha’s twin sister. She was Millie’s friend. Jett’s student. Lenka’s padawan.
What then, was she. What about Acubens mattered? Was it her fuku, her sphere, or her fighting skills? Was it what she fought for, the planet that she was too frightened to visit, or the way she henshined up? All of those things felt like details, easily lost and changed as time went on.
Did Acubens even matter?
Or did Micah matter more?
Acubens was fighting a war, but she was just one in a sea of senshi. But that was still a smaller pool than the sea of faces of humankind that Micah floundered in.
Supposing Micah did matter more, what made her matter so much? Was it her wild hair or her golden eyes? Was it the fact that she was a twin? Her erratic nature? How she flitted from one thing to another like a humming bird? What made her stand out from the crowd?
Was that what made her matter?
What made something matter in the first place? What other people thought of something, or what the thing thought of itself.
This gave Acubens pause in her musings, blinking finally after several moments of blankly staring at the sky.
That was a very good question. She supposed… what she thought of herself made her matter. Because she wasn’t going to matter to anyone else if she didn’t matter to herself first. If she mattered to herself, then she could give herself reason to matter to other people. And she must have mattered to herself, because she wasn’t dead yet. She hadn’t let herself die, nor had she killed herself.
Yes, that must have been it.
Which meant that if she mattered to herself, then she mattered to her parents, and to Misha and Jett and Millie. It was like each person she mattered to lent some corporality to her body. Like she became more and more opaque with each person who looked at her and said, “Yes, you are important to me.” But for them to lend opacity to her, Acubens had to first allow herself to let go of her translucency. By acknowledging that, yes, she was going to matter to someone, even if it was only to herself.
So if Micah mattered, then Acubens must also matter. Because Acubens mattered to Micah the same way Micah mattered to herself. And now that she mattered…
“I can start finding a purpose.”
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Posted: Fri Jul 05, 2013 3:22 pm
Exile
Word Count -- 747
This couldn’t be happening. This wasn’t happening. Micah blinked at her parents without saying a word.
“Mykes…” her father ventured carefully. “Mykes, do you understand what we’re saying?”
“No.”
Her mother deflated, leaning hard back in her chair. Her father rubbed his temples. Misha diverted his attention out the window. She looked at each of them as they tried to find ways to cope with their daughter. They couldn’t look at her for long now anyway, not with the way she came home beaten more often than not. Her parents thought she was joining a gang. Or had already joined one. She understood that part. And she sort of had joined a gang. Sort of. At least that was a much easier explanation than telling them that she was an intergalactic warrior for truth and justice. Who may or may not be looking at defecting to the bad guys. Bad guys that she still wasn’t convinced were even bad guys in the first place.
Like how did you even broach that subject?
“Hey mom, dad, check this out! I’m a magical girl from outer space! … Hey, who are these guys in white? Mom? Dad?”
It was just easier to let them assume that she’d joined a street gang and was brawling. It was essentially the same thing.
“Micah, are you even listening?”
Her mother’s voice was edging dangerously on screeching, making Micah pull a face over the volume.
“Yes, mother, I’m listening.”
“Then what did I say.”
Micah was quiet, watching her mother carefully before she finally confessed, “okay, I wasn’t listening.”
“Oh good lord, Grayson, can you handle your daughter please?”
And with that her mother was gone. She stood, threw her hands up, and left the room. It was for the best, really she was impossible when she got flustered. It was where Micah got her temper.
As if her mother didn’t deserve to be angry about what was happening.
“You gonna help me with this,” Micah snapped at her silent brother. He only shrugged, continuing to gaze out into their front lawn. Micah made a rude gesture at him, making her father snap her name.
“I don’t think you understand how scared we are Micah,” he ground out, trying to keep his voice low.
“I think I have some idea,” she began flippantly.
“We have to send you away, Micah.”
Micah froze, finger in the middle of curling around one bright lock of hair, eyes wide.
“Got your attention now, don’t I?”
Micah was quiet for a long moment, looking anywhere but her father. The wall was a nice color green, she noticed. And the cabinets were walnutty enough to offset the sage just right. It wasn’t too dark of a kitchen.
“So I’m too busted to stay home,” Micah finally croaked. Her father sighed and dropped his head, muttering, “No, no, baby, no, that’s not what’s happening.”
“No but it is. You’re sending me to the nut house because I’ve got guano, isn’t that what’s happening?”
“We’re sending you to Scotland because you’re too close to the problem here.”
“And what is my problem?”
Micah hadn’t meant to scream. She hadn’t meant to stand up. She hadn’t meant to knock a glass off the table so hard that it sailed right over the linoleum and shattered against the wall. She hadn’t meant to hear her mother sobbing up in her room.
“You’re problem,” her father began, straining to keep himself calm, “is whatever crowd you’re running with these days.”
“That crowd,” Micah ground right back, rising as her father grew with his temper, “saves your a** every single day.”
“Mykes,” Misha muttered from the window, finally turning back to her.
“I’m not out there fighting to fight, I’m out there fighting monsters like the one that almost killed Misha and me.”
“Mykes.” Micah ignored her brother again.
“I’m making sure none of you end up dead,”
“Micah.” Finally Misha had Micah’s attention. She turned wild yellow eyes on him, her lips thin as she silently demanded to know what he wanted.
“Go upstairs and pack for Gran and Gandad’s house. You’ve said your piece and you’re done.”
Micah watched her brother for another long moment, trying to stare him down. But he was stone and Micah finally broke against him. She shoved the table towards her father in a final act of defiance before she left.
She swears she didn’t hear her father crying as she ran upstairs. That was something else.
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Posted: Fri Jul 05, 2013 3:22 pm
Homecoming
Word Count -- 554
Traveling made Micah sick. It always had, and it probably always would. It didn’t help that the food on the flight was disgusting and the pilot had taken a nose dive when he descended. By the time the plane landed, Micah was in very real danger of throwing up. This was the reason that instead of running to greet her waiting family like she should have been, she ran right past them, shoving her brother out of the way and disappearing into the bathroom.
“Honey,” came a cautious knock on the door of the stall.
“Yeah ma,” Micah had developed an accent that she only just now noticed.
“You alright sweetie?”
Micah retched in answer, emptying her stomach into the bowl of the toilet.
“Oh good,” her mother sighed. “Well, I mean not good, but we were worried that you were still…”
“I’m not angry with you ma, planes just suck…”
Micah stayed in the bathroom for a little longer, just in case, and by the time she got out her mother had left and come back with a toothbrush and small tube of tooth paste.
“Thank god for gift shops,” Micah muttered as she cleaned her mouth out. Her mom kept stroking her hair as she did so.
While she had been gone, she had skyped her parents more than enough. It’s not like they were out of contact or anything. But skyping or no, Micah did miss them. And, she supposed, her twerp of a brother. Skyping was one thing, but when she finally flew into her mom’s arms after cleaning her teeth, it was different. Marcia laughed and hugged her back, florescent bathroom lights flickering above them.
“It wasn’t the reunion I planned on having,” Micah muttered.
“You’re home now. That’s all that matters.”
Misha was waiting outside the bathroom to ambush his sister. She hadn’t gotten more than a few steps out when he bound her in a head lock and mussed her air so bad that it started to mat. By the time she got away, both siblings were laughing so hard they could hardly breathe. Micah’s father hugged her so hard her ribs nearly broke.
“Let’s go out to dinner,” he announced. “My treat!”
Micah’s stomach turned violently, still not over the sickness from the flight, and cast a pleading look at her mother.
“Gray,” Marcia said quickly, “Micah’s just come off of an 11 hours flight, honey. Let’s go home and let her body adjust to the new time zone. We can go out for dinner when she’s more herself, alright?”
Grayson’s face dropped a little, disappointed that his gift was not well received, so Micah quickly but in, “I have been dreaming of your home made tiramisu, though, dad. Could you make that instead?”
It worked. Grayson’s face lit back up and he hugged Micah close again.
“Anything for you little bird,” he muttered into her hair.
The ride home was chaotic. Misha and Micah hadn’t been in the same car since before they both got their licenses, so making room for each other was sort of a task. That and Misha kept making fun of her new accent. Micah hit and shoved and kicked him the whole ride home, but Misha kept quoting Braveheart. Really Micah didn’t mind. She was just glad to be home.
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Posted: Sat May 10, 2014 3:54 am
I Know My Kingdom Awaits-- Space Solo
Word Count -- 2058
It was the first time Acubens had ever seen this many stars. She looked up and around her, the phone still in her hand and her finger still on the “call home” button. She supposed that it made sense that since there wasn’t any other light, there wouldn’t be anything to drown them out. Was it always like this or was it just night? There was so much she had to learn about who she used to be. What kind of person was the original Acubens? Was she kind or cruel? Was she even a she? She had promised herself that when she got back from Scotland the first thing she would do was come here and find out all she could. Of course that hadnt’ happened. She got back and sit promptly hit the fan and well… she was here now. That was what mattered.
A deep uneasiness crept through Acubens’ veins as she stood on the sand, facing out towards an endless ocean before her. Something like shame overcame her, turning her stomach like she needed to vomit. She nearly did. Finally she turned to face the dense jungle that towered above the sand, impossibly green and impenetrable save for a small path overgrown with smaller vegetation that lead into the darkness. It didn’t exactly look safe, but Acubens had already come all the way out to space. Delving into the jungle wouldn’t be that much more dangerous. And so, carefully, she picked her way along the path, boughs settling and cracking in the darkness beyond the path where she could not see. She couldn’t see anything. She was surrounded by darkness on all sides, unable to see the end of the path and the entrance too far behind her now. It must have been lit once, every ten or so feet great poles jutted from the ground and if Acubens squinted she could see what looked like the head of a giant torch at the top. So maybe it was always night here.
The path wasn’t exactly straight, meandering this way and that, but it never branched. So at least Acubens could be certain that she could find her wait back if she needed. But it also never seemed to end. To keep herself from panicking at the never ending length before her, Acubens opted instead to focus on the ground below her feet, trying to avoid roots and plants and keep herself steady. At some points, the worn dirt was so over grown with vegetation that the only reason Acubens hadn’t already wandered off path was the wall of trees on either side of her.
Just walk. Keep walking. All paths lead somewhere, and so must this one.
Her self-coaching didn’t stop that vague feeling of shame creeping over her shoulder like a shadow to grip her heart, deepening the feeling of self-loathing until she almost couldn’t take another step forward. What was happening? Why was this feeling taking over her? Acubens’ eyes quickly grew too hot and she took to weeping so hard that she almost missed the bright crescent gleaming on the ground. She stood for a moment over the relic, staring at, trying to discern what it might have been. A… a claw? Acubens stooped to retrieve that relic, which of course was a mistake.
The second her hand closed around the bone her knees gave out under her, sending her down into the dirt in a fit of screams. She tried to let the claw go but it burned into her skin while the deep shame turned to violent grief. Her sight left her and all she could see were bright pink and violet featers, bright golden eyes and the shrieking call of a creature she’d never seen before but knew the same with sudden terrifying clarity.
Clawfoot
The voice in her mind was not her own, dripping with affection as her hands felt feathers that no longer lived to be touched. A giant raptor took shape in her mind, her sharply toothed mouth all but smiling as she chirped.
And then it was gone. The vision, the shame, everything, like it had never even existed in the first place. Acubens was left shaking and gasping for breath on the ground, arms weak as she tried to hoist herself up out of the dirt. Her sight felt too sharp, like her eyes suddenly adjusted to the darkness when previously they were not. She gulped and moved forward, the claw still gripped tightly in her fist. Forward and forward and forward she pushed, the trek easier without whatever shame it was before holding her back.
Finally the path opened into what Acubens a vastly lighter jungle. Heel to toe Acubens counted twenty paces between giant vine-covered tree trucks she could wrap herself around end to end almost three times. She tried to count the trees in the clearing but lost count and her way more than once. Somewhere near the center she finally found what had to have been the widest tree trunk she’d ever seen. Easily as wide as her bedroom, maybe even more. She followed its length up and up into the heavily leafed boughs to see where it ended. So engrossed was she in the sheer size of the thing that she almost missed the roughly hewn boards hidden above the leaves.
She had to get up there.
Quickly she circled the base of the giant tree, looking for some sort of ladder or steps. Finding nothing, she circled again and again until she had all but given up. Nothing. No ladder. Whatever was up there, Acubens would have to find another way to get up there. She leaned back to think against the mossy, viney trunk and promptly fell through it. She cried out, landing hard on her back against the cold stone floor within. Unlit torches lined the walls, making Acubens promise that she’d bring a lighter with her next time she went exploring. The door her fell through creaked, but offered a little light, so she left it opened and carefully made her way up the well-worn stone steps. It was like the path all over again; darkness on every side and no sign that the way was ending. At least whatever shame she had felt before had left her pretty totally.
Okay, maybe not totally like the path, the steps ended way before the path ever did. Like the path, however, it opened suddenly, without gate or door or warning, into a great opening. The raw boards beneath Acubens’ feet creaked, cautioning Acubens, but felt more than sturdy enough to move forward. The wall about two dozen feet a head of her was all stone with etching carved into its surface. She approached to try and make something out, but it was too dark. There had to be something somewhere she could use for light.
Acubens followed the wall around until she met more stone. A partition wall that separated her from the room beyond with no way through where she was. That exit lay in the middle of the wall, she soon discovered. The next room was as close to an armory as she could get. Anvils lay in two lines on the middle of the room while great furnaces wall either side. Racks and racks of metal weapons all still wickedly pointed lay strewn about as though everyone working here might have just left for the day. Flint and steel. She might find flint and steel here. And so she did, and rushed to the nearest torch for light.
Back at the etched wall Acubens discovered some kind of pictographic account of… something. It was too hard to get a good look with so little light, so she set about lighting adjacent torches. She had only just lit the nearest one at the base of the etching when the flame took off, dancing around the boarder of the stone table and around the whole room, lighting it with fire. It was like in the movies.
“Well look at that…” she muttered, her voice echoing in the empty room.
It was indeed an account. A historical account, as a matter of fact. At the very top left hand corner was carved a small sphere and from there, as best Acubens could discern having no understanding of what she was reading, unfolded the planet’s creation myth. A bird flew over the sphere (planet?) and dropped something onto it (a seed?). From that seed, at the very top of the planet sprouted one tree, jutting out into space. Around that tree, others grew until a jungle covered all the planet. Next came a giant wave, erasing most of the forest until only the central tree remained along with an island of jungle. In the next series of pictographs were seemed to be a list of animals that Acubens was able to recognize as dinosaurs. Or close to them, anyway. Tyrannosaurus Rex’s, Stegosauruses’, Triceratops’; on and on the list went, each little picture next to a tiny image of a person – or something like a person with bent-backwards-legs -- for size references. At the end of the list was picture a velociraptor, large enough to ride and plumed. Acubens looked down at the claw in her hand, sudden comprehension dawning on her.
This was Clawfoot’s claw, she’d already pieced that together. But whoever Acubens used to be, that Raptor was her steed. Probably even her pet and best friend.
Shame washed over her again, this time much less intense and much quicker to leave her. She read on as it ebbed away.
Someone holding a sword sat astride the raptors, and then more of the riders were depicted. Some sort of army? It had to be. Someone’s face was etched into the stone next, implying they were someone of great importance. The ruler of the land? Probably, given the star above their head. The next face had three bars above it, which probably meant something equal to a general. On and on the story went, telling the story of the planet, recording how the people learned to build their homes in trees to avoid the creatures down below and discovered which plants were good to eat and which were not. Eventually one of the rulers, a short, fat man discovered that the poisons could be extracted from the toxic plants and made into serums which could then be sold to other planets. His son expanded on that practice to include his own people, sending them out as mercenaries. Generals became top mercenaries, and the royal line went from blood to who could defend their claim to the throne most effectively. The generals followed the rulers, each new line electing a new champion to fight for them and their planet. Finally, Acubens stopped at the end of the etching, nearly losing her balance.
Large bright eyes stared angrily out from the stone, hair matted into dread locks that fell past her shoulders.
Acubens. Or at least the senshi called Acubens. And above her head three straight lines. She’d been a fighter. A fierce one, by the tale the etching told. She never came back with less soldier than she set out with. A couple of times she came back with more. She might have made alliances too, if she was interpreting her figure with four spheres overhead. All of them had their own symbols, though Acubens had no way of knowing what they meant.
And then it ended. Acubens looked up and around, searching for something else, though she wasn’t sure what. Maybe more answers, or, if she was being totally honest, what she was supposed to be doing next. She’d just gotten back to Destiny City from somewhere so far removed from the ******** she’d left that it was hilarious and now here she was in space. She laughed once, thinking of what a s**t hole her life had become.
“So now what do I do,” she asked, feeling the etching of the soldier’s face. “What did you do in my position?” Of course, the carving told her nothing. Slitted eyes just stared out, past Acubens and to the wall behind her.
“Time to go home, then.”
And so she did, after placing what was left of the raptor beneath what was left of it’s master.
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Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2015 12:34 pm
Moving Day
Word Count -- 901
Micah slept forever. Literally forever. Okay maybe not literally, but she slept until her body was readjusted to Destiny City’s time zone. And when she woke up her dad fulfilled his promise at the airport and took them all out to dinner. It was there that Micah finally dropped the bomb that she’d been keeping in her brain since the plane ride home.
“Mom, dad?”
“Uh-oh,” Grayson said, looking up over his half-moon glasses at Micah. “Trouble always follows those words.” Marcia kicked her husband under the table and motioned for Micah to continue.
“Well, I’m 18 now and so is Mish and I were thinking maybe I should get a place of my own. I got accepted to DCU last year and maybe I can rent an apartment on campus. That way I can take the bus the classes and not have to rely on gas.” She didn’t look up at her parents until after she’d finished speaking. Even then it was only a glance.
“Honey, you just got home,” Grayson almost whined.
“I know, I know. But it won’t be far away, and it’s not like I’m moving out right away. The leasing period begins in like August.”
“Yeah, actually, I was thinking the same thing,” Misha added, glancing at Micah. “DCU has this great computer programming program that I was looking into so I could move in with Mykes and split the rent.”
Marcia sighed, putting her fork down – a sign that she was getting ready for a serious chat.
“Have the two of you looked at apartments up there yet?”
“I have,” Misha cut in before Micah had a chance to flounder. “And there’s one right on the edge of Campustown for like 300 a month. 150 each plus utilities. Internet is included.” Micah only nodded emphatically, twirling her pasta around her fork. Their parents sighed and finally agreed that if they would support their kids no matter what.
And so months flew by as the twins worked extra hours for the deposit and finally it was moving day. Micah moved box after box into the moving van until she finally stood in her room, purple walls and nothing else proving she had been there. It was a little sad, sure, but, as Misha pointed out, she wouldn’t have to sneak out to do her job anymore.
She hadn’t seen the apartment, since Misha went alone to set up the lease and deposit the first month’s rent. She wasn’t sure what to expect, but it certainly wasn’t what she got. 300 on campus wasn’t supposed to get you much. But it got Misha and Micah a room with two bedrooms, one bathroom, and kitchen and a living room. It also got them a location next to three grocery stores and tons of restaurants, including Micah’s favorite Italian place.
“Wow,” she muttered as she stood in the empty living room.
“Seriously, what’s wrong with this place to make it so cheap,” her mother agreed from next to her.
“Don’t question it, ma. Let’s just get all the stuff in.”
It wasn’t much. Micah was downgrading to a twin sized bed to accommodate her smaller room, but other than that, it was just boxes. Still, Micah had to climb up three flights of stairs with no elevators at the tail end of summer, so she was sweating like a b***h about three trips later. Her parents and brother weren’t doing much better, trying to alleviate some discomfort by joking about other ways to get everything in the apartment. Pulley systems, magic, and teleportation were all discussed. It didn’t make things any less hot, but it made them a little more fun.
It took all day to get everything out of the van. The sun was setting by the time Micah’s parents left for home again, leaving Misha and Micah sitting in their new living room. They watched each other for a good long time before either one spoke.
“I’m hungry,” Micah sighed, leaning against the bookshelf that needed a home.
“Italian,” Misha offered, already punching in the numbers.
They ate in silence, deciding that tomorrow they would get the living room and kitchen in order. For now they were both just sort of shell shocked. They were living in their own apartment, like real adults. This would be their new home. They had a lease and rent and everything. They would have to buy their own groceries and clean the dishes without any parental help.
“You gonna patrol tonight,” Misha asked, tossing the empty containters away when they finished.
“Nah,” Micah sighed. “I think I’ll take tonight off. Destiny City won’t fall to pieces without me for one night.”
The TV wasn’t hooked up, and honestly, they were both so tired that bed really was the best option. Later Micah would get home sick and have trouble sleeping, but right now she was exhausted.
In her room, her bed was the only thing set up and made, a house warming present from her mother. She fell into her bed and stared up and the ceiling for a moment. She could feel it, deep inside. Everything was going to be different this time. She’d gone to visit her planet and felt more in tune with the person she used to be when it was alive. She could channel that person and finally start heading the way she was supposed to.
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Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2015 12:40 pm
Have They Forgiven My Mistakes? -- Space Solo
Word Count -- 3240
The second time never hurts as much. Acubens looked up at the diamond sky, that one thought rattling around her brain. Nostalgia didn’t hit her with a wave of nausea this time, and she even remembered to bring a flash light with her. And she even knew the way. Last time the walk to the clearing felt like it took hours, this time it felt like maybe a mile. She didn’t slow down. She didn’t have any hallucinations. Acubens just walked. No rush. It was actually sort of nice when she wasn’t being overwhelmed by flashbacks. The path was over grown but not in the horror film kind of way, but in a more reclaimed-by-nature sort of way. Like when a house is abandoned and taken back over by the surrounding plants. Or when a road is cracked and broken up, with grass and flowers poking through the concrete. It helped that there was a moon out this time, and even though it was night again, everything was speckled with silver light.
The clearing materialized out of nowhere again, suddenly laid before Acubens in a spectacle of silver and pale blue. She hadn’t noticed a pale, worn path leading from the jungle straight under the door of the tree in the center. Maybe if she hadn’t been so distracted when she was here last… Not that it was her fault or anything. It was sort of hard to focus when you were plagued by this annoying edge of shame when you hadn’t even done anything wrong in the first place.
The steps inside the tree, she noticed this time, weren’t stone at all. She leaned down to touch them and realized they were petrified wood, carved from the meat of the tree itself. It felt like stone, as petrified wood does, but the grain was still clearly visible. It made sense, she supposed. How would stone steps have gotten here anyway? The dipped in the center, having been used over and over for dos knows how long. In some cases, the wood grain was worn away altogether, leaving only a smooth surface. The walls were the same smooth wood as the steps, with small openings cut through to let light into the stairwell. It was, all in all, a very pleasant place to be. The air was slightly damp and made the heat a palpable thing, but it was more comfortable than not. Like a sunny summer day. There were no sounds in the jungle, aside from the breeze rustling the leaves around her. It was peaceful.
Up and up she went until she finally entered the central room which was still lit from the last time she had entered. So clearly things didn’t reset. This time, Acubens took a better look around, less distracted and more focused on exploration. The room looked like a trophy room mixed with a museum. Above each display was a symbol, much like the ones in the tiny circles around the heads carved into the back wall. One table was covered with pelts and seed pods, another with jems and jars of scented oils. Table after table of things which could not have been from this planet. Not to be rude, but Acubens doubted that whoever lived here could produce deep colored silk and finely made glass statues. Was this a trophy room from places the people here had conquered? Or maybe a place to display treasures from friends? Did this planet have friends? Maybe there was a records room that could help Acubens understand more.
The armory that Acubens found ended up being a dead end. A very educational dead end, but a dead end none the less. Evidently, as Acubens inspected a small stone-working machine, the people who lived here moved from stone to steel at some point. Not very fine steel, as the swords and knifes were pockmarked and roughly made, but still sharp even after so long untended. Clearly beauty had been sacrificed for strength. Where had the steel come from? Acubens hadn’t noticed any mines on her trip to the center, but that was a very small percentage of what there was to see.
In the middle of the wall with the faces on it was an archway, large enough for two people to walk through abreast and reaching almost to the ceiling. The room on the other side was dark, thought Acubens could make out shapes. Hopefully there would be a lighting system similar to the one in the display room, so she grabbed a torch from the wall to take with her. Luckily, she was right, and the oil pot to the left of the doorway snatched up the fire she offered and sent it blazing across the walls.
A throne room.
On the opposite wall there was a great wooden throne, draped with pelts and silks and cushions and all manner of different textiles from different worlds. Between the door and the throne, however, there were great wooden tables with maps spread out on their surface. Ink pots, some of which had been knocked over and ruined some maps. In the corner were the same little symbols as in the other room – clearly planets at this point. Maps of terrain with lines drawn across them, little figures positioned at certain points. So this was also a war room. Was battle so important that it was synonymous with the ruling power of this planet? Why else would the war room be in the throne room. Anyone who came to visit would see the military power this planet held. It was clever, but terrifying.
Up and down the rows she went. Acubens recognized a couple of the symbols from the other room, like the planet covered in forests which also must have supplied the pelts and seed pods. There was also a map for the planet that provided the gems and silks. Still another for the delicate glass. Each had what looked like an attack plan drawn out. The only difference was some here marked in red ink and others in black. The red ink didn’t have symbols in the other rooms. So were the maps marked in black for latent plans? Like a “just in case” sort of thing? So they were fighters and paranoid?
Voices from the other room made Acubens stand straight up. Voices? Was there someone there? There were no signs of life, Acubens sort of assumed this planet had died. Had she been wrong? The sounds leaked out from the doors on either side of the throne, though no light shone from beneath them. It sounded almost like a party. Men and women laughed and talked, sometimes even stamping their feet. Well, talked as much as Acubens could tell. It sounded more like grunting than anything else. Closer and closer she crept, the voices never quieting. Either someone didn’t notice her or they didn’t care.
As soon as Acubens poked her head in, the voices stopped, and all she saw was a dark room. She lit another oil pot to better see where she had been led. Straw and rawhide pallets were lined up against the walls with roughly crafted pillows at the ends. Pelts of different types and sizes were strewn across each bed like everyone felt before they could be made. Acubens walked up and down the small room, counting fifteen beds. Seven along both walls and one at the head. That one, however, had a small nest at the foot. She touched it and with a flash understood.
Clawfoot
This had been the raptor’s nest, and it’s owners bed.
Tangled
Acubens shook her head. Tangled? Nothing looked tangled. She pushed the word aside and walked around to the side of the pallet. She reached out, hoping that maybe it would be warm, that maybe she had just missed the others somehow. It was cold of course. She huffed and flopped to sit on it, grabbing the pillow and hugged it to her chest, like she would any pillow back home. Mistakes. Mistakes were made. The pillow had been covered in and filled with dust, which was now everywhere. She coughed and wheezed, flapping her hands to try and clear the air. By the time everything settled, Acubens’ eyes were watering and she was having a little trouble breathing. Stupid dust.
Something glittered out of the corner of her eye. A small butterfly charm on a leather cord lay under where the pillow had been. No, a moth. Acubens hesitated before running her finger along the edge of the little charm. Odd. She picked it up, finding it to be made of some sort of stone. It was heavy in her hand. Again, without thinking, Acubens put it around her neck.
Blonde hair and brown eyes flashed in front of her, filling her vision. A light laugh seemed to come from no where and Acubens felt suddenly overwhelmed with… love? She sat stunned by the force of it, even after her vision cleared. So the little moth charm was given to her past incarnation by someone she loved? Why a moth?
And suddenly she remembered.
Acubens groaned, head rolling back as understanding over took her. Lesath was a Dark Mirror Senshi, but she was still a senshi, and may have even had an ordered past incarnation. And if that was true, then Acubens’ past self had been pretty deeply involved with her. So much so that the love that washed over her equaled the shame she felt on her last visit.
“Great,” she muttered, putting the necklace and the pillow back. “Just great.”
Acubens left the barracks and the memory of someone who may or may not have been Lesath behind.
“Records room. Records room…”
Acubens wasn’t sure if this whole palace was in one tree, but if it was, that was impressive. Even if it wasn’t it was still something to behold. She passed mess halls and kitchens and openings to a large tree-top court yard filled with what looked like practice rings. Finally she turned down a dusty hall with torch in one hand and flashlight in the other and came to a single door. May as well open it, what was the worst thing that could happen?
The room lit up to show her wall upon wall upon wall of parchment scrolls. Finally. Records. Acubens stowed her torch on the wall and settled in for the long haul. Each parchment scroll was tucked into a little cubby with either a face or a symbol etched into the top of the hole. She grabbed the scroll with her face and the symbols she remembered from the trophy room to do some research. Time to find out who she used to be.
She used to be bad a**. The scroll unrolled to show a full length drawing of her former self, and she looked awesome. Her hair had been dreaded, but was still bright bright red and her golden eyes were slitted like a lizard’s. What was most astonishing, however, was that below her waist were legs that looked like raptor legs. They were colored to match the foliage; tones of greens and browns, and wickedly clawed. Next to her was another full length drawing of Clawfoot. He had been violet and pink with navy blue leopard sopts speckling his back, which was odd considering Acubens’ understanding of earth dinosaurs. He also had a plumed tail and feathers on his forearms. He had been, in a word, beautiful.
Acubens of this planet had been called Tangled in Weeds, she gathered, though how she was able to decipher the language of the scrolls was beyond her. She, just like the other senshi, hatched the raptor from an egg and grew up beside him, forming an unbreakable bond between steed and rider. She had also been a formidable fighter, rising to be follow her father as general of her troops. She was first and foremost a mercenary, though forged the most alliances of any of her predecessors. Those alliances were listed at the bottom with the most notable being Lesath, Leto, and Remarque.
Again, Acubens vision swam, causing her to lose her balance. Blindly she grasped for Lesath’s scroll and tore it open. The senshi that was drawn at the top of the scroll was, indeed, reminiscent of the senshi back home. And she has listed as a love interest of Acubens’ former self. Acubens didn’t look at the rest of the scroll before grabbing for Remarque’s. That senshi had been born of a female embassador to Acubens and the Acuben general. Tangled’s father. Leto had been their foremost trading partner, with Acubens taking several trips to that planet to hunt with the senshi form that ******** was in deeper with that crowd than she had ******** ******** ******** ******** and romance and family bonds… she had never accounted for that.
She ran. Acubens ran faster than she had in a long while, forgetting to grab her flashlight and the torch on the wall. That did explain why she felt so at home with the other senshi, but… she had so wanted to believe that she had a chance to be good. She had so wanted…
Acubens was back in the throne room before she finally stopped to take a breath. Maybe she was jumping to conclusions. Her connections with these past senshi didn’t mean that she was doomed to be bad herself. The senshi had been good when Tangled knew them. Or at least order aligned. There was no reason to assume, either, that the Dark Mirror Court was her fate now that it was the fate of those reincarnations. Those were just things that were. Leto, Remarque, and Lesath were all Dark Mirror Senshi now. Yes. But they had, at one point, had incarnations that were order aligned and knew Tangled very well.
Still, it didn’t help the aching feeling that she was somehow being hastened toward the inevitable.
Acubens took a seat in the throne, surveying the room as she tried to collect her nerves. What, then, was she to do now? She mussed her hair and thought in the flickering light of the war / throne room. It was merry enough, she thought absently. The maps might have been cleared to hold celebrations. Maybe, she fancied, the soldiers would all gather here after a successful mission and drink and eat and laugh. Would the raptors have been there? She picked at the pelt thrown over the arm of the chair for a moment as she day dreamed. This place would be wonderful in the day. Maybe she’d stay until the run rose, just to see what it looked like. This throne was comfy enough, she could doze in it until then.
She shifted, causing another slip of paper to fall form between some layers of silk and cotton. She scooped it up and tried to make heads or tails of it. It was the same language as the records, but she could no longer read it. Maybe it was for the best. Acubens got this sinking feeling when she held it. Like it bore horrible news or revealed another terrible truth…
Fatigue swept over her, stretching her mouth in a huge yawn. She curled up in the great seat and let the paper fall to the floor again. It was a really comfy chair, all cushions and blankets.
Acubens wasn’t sure when she fell asleep, but she was dreaming soon enough. That woman from the scroll paced up and down the length of the throne room, worry creasing her face.
“Father,” she grunted, wringing her hands behind her back. “I’m not certain this is a good idea. That planet blinked out of contact to the rest of the galaxy and suddenly they want a siege that will require all of our troops?”
“I know,” the rotund man muttered from his seat on front of a well-worn map. “It smells like a trap. But trade has ground to a halt, Tangled. We were at one point self-sufficient, but the trading alliances you set up during your time as general has made the people… accustomed to a certain style of life. A style we can no longer afford with no one trading with us.”
“So this is my fault?”
“That’s not what I said.”
“But it is.” Tangled’s pacing stopped suddenly as she whipped around to look at her father. “I spoiled our people and ruined out economy in the process.” She turned the slip of paper in her hands, considering her options.
“If we take all of the troops on this mission, there will be no one to protect the people,” she muttered.
“The people can protect themselves. Who do you think we are,” her father chucked, trying to alleviate some of the darkness surrounding his daughter, “one of those vapid moon residents? With their dripping jewels and their gauzy dresses. Their men look more like women! Bah. Acuben people are harder to kill then you give them credit for.”
Tangled smiled with the old man. It was probably nothing. And the mission would pay enormously well. Well enough to restart the Acuben economy and kick start trading again.
“There is that shadow to consider,” Acubens cautioned her father, sitting on the other side of the table from him. The old man nodded slowly, pursing his lips in thought.
“Yes, there is something out there. More and more planets are going off radar, I’ll admit.” He sighed as he paused, as though choosing his words carefully. “But… the planets that this force is taking are smaller. Much less defense. Almost no military.”
“So they aren’t a threat, you don’t think?”
“They are a threat. They have taken whole planets. It’s just that… I don’t think they are a major one. Anyone who tries to take this planet will have to deal with its people.”
Acubens sighed, staring down at the request. It was good money. And it wasn’t a hard assignment. Take out a single diplomat. The only reason so many soldiers were needed were to handle all of the moving parts of the mission.
“Is there anyone who can spare soldiers while we’re away?”
Tangled’s father shook his head.
“Planets are hoarding their swords while they watch whatever is out there. The general hope, as I understand it, is that it was putter out, but just in case, everyone seems to be on high alert.”
“Everyone but us.”
“If we didn’t need the money so bad, I would advise you to be more cautious but… we need to feed out people, Tangled.”
Tangled nodded.
Acubens woke with a start, falling out of the throne. Had she been asleep? Her face felt sort of deadened, like when she woke up from a really deep nap but it was still dark out. She couldn’t have been out for more than a few hours.
She felt sick. It had just been a dream but… the slip of paper looked exactly like the one in her dream. Or had it been a hallucination? Whatever it was, Acubens needed to get away from it. Far away. If the dream was right, then Acubens had every reason to be ashamed. And she had no reason to return if that was what she had done in a past life.
“Home,” she muttered, fumbling with her little cell phone. “Take me home…”
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Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2015 12:46 pm
What Happened to Micah Driscoll?
Word Count -- 770
You didn’t have to have a deep understanding of Micah to know that she was off. Anyone who had seen her once could tell. Where once she bounced and played, she moved like the air around her had turned to tar. Where once she made friends like others breathed, she now avoided anyone’s eyes except for once or twice on accident, and afterwards she acted like the frightened animal, twitching and whispering to herself. She wrung her hands more often than before, which was impressive. Something had fundamentally changed inside of Micah. Or maybe a better word was broke. Yes, something inside of Micah had broken. Her parents pried as parents do, and her brother sat on the other end of the room and watched with piercing eyes, but try as they might, none could ever get to the core of Micah’s hurt.
But how did she tell them? How did Micah even begin to explain the depth of her own betrayal to herself? She had promised to keep her family safe, but at what cost? And to what end was she really fighting Bischofite? In the beginning, the ends justified the means. How much are you willing to hurt yourself to stop me? Of course Micah would lay down her life to stop Bischofite, no questions asked. Scrapes and bruises. Deeper cuts. Gashes. Near decapitation at one point. But it had, all of it, been worth it. Small smears of Bischofite’s blood on the ground when she got in good hits. Winces when she hit him. Outbursts of rage when she caught him off guard. Every hurt and ache had been worth it.
Recently, however, Bischofite had enacted a phase two that Micah had not been aware of. She was willing to mutilate and kill herself to stop him. But what if it wasn’t her life on the line? What if it was someone else's?
The choice had been as easy as the one before her. Micah only wished that she had made the right choice then. They were only cuts and bruises at first. Civilians got roughed up, thrown around a little. But they left on two legs. Micah should have known better. She knew Bischofite. She knew that he always… always escalated so insidiously that she would never have noticed. Worse… Micah had put every single mark on those civilians. Bischofite never raised a hand to them. Now she was rushing civilians to hospitals with gashes that threatened lives and in some cases… claimed them.
But time has a funny way of working on wounds and even cancers. She wasn’t dreaming anymore. Before she had nightmares. Crippling, shrieking, blood-clod nightmares that she wrenched herself out of more nights than not, but at least that was something. Now the nights passed peacefully in darkness… she was sleeping again. She wasn’t terrified of the loss of someone, close to her or otherwise. She wasn’t worried about anything anymore. At least not when the sun set and her patrol was began.
Maybe that was what scared her the most. That when all was said and done with the day she wasn’t as riddled with guilt and defeat as she should have been. She slept deeply and soundly and when she woke she felt alright. It was only the course of the day that truly defeated her.
Or maybe she defeated herself…
Micah punched down the dough in the bowl in an attempt to relieve herself of that troubling thought. She would make these god damned cinnamon rolls and they would be delicious and they would not be nutritious at all in fact they would be quite horrible for her and she would eat a whole pan and be god damned ******** happy about it too.
Honestly, Micah had had just about enough of this spiraling nonsense and she was going to end it. Today. With cinnamon rolls. Which she would consume entirely by herself. She rolled out the dough with exactly that intention. Each raisin was a reason to be happy. Each pecan was a smile she could wear. Each and every single grain of brown sugar was love and joy and peace and everything that was good in the world.
She couldn’t smell the rolls in the oven when Misha said that something smelled good. Micah told herself that it was because she’d been working with the rolls all day. You can never really smell what you cook, right?
And your own dishes always taste like dirt.
Micah dumped the rest of the pan into the trash and went to bed.
<******** cinnamon rolls anyway.
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Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2015 5:50 pm
Reasons Not to Go Home Right After the Battle Word Count -- 511
Acubens couldn't go home... not right now at least. Not like this. Not bloodsoaked and wretched, pin-cushioned with shards of glass and hating every breath she took with her own lungs. Hating everything about her own body. Everything about herself. That seemed to be the norm now. If it wasn't crippling numbness that washed over her like an ice-cold wave, then it was searing hot hatred that cauterized her nerves and forced her to her knees.
She couldn't go home like this. She already put Misha through so much in a day, she couldn't put him through this. She needed to get herself together... if only for him. She owed him that much.
She owed him much more in truth. She owed him a functioning sister.
Acubens roared in frustration and scrubbed her nails so hard through her hair that her scalp threatened to bleed. She couldn’t give him a functioning sister. All she could give him was this busted confused pile of garbage that she was. And that wasn’t. ********. Good enough.
Soemthing inside of Acubens broke in that moment. It was something that she had been avoiding for a long time but… but she couldn’t run any longer. Bischofite had done something to her. Something that she couldn’t turn a blind eye to any longer. He had changed her fundamentally, backed her into a corner that she hadn’t even seen coming and had warped what she knew to be true about herself. Everything that she thought she had known…
Panic rose in Acubens’ chest, a white hot wildfire that tore through every single atom of her being. It drug her to her knees and bent her over double as it roared over her nerves. Was she screaming? Acubens couldn’t tell through the rush of blood pumping through her veins to prepare her for the attack that her mind had convinced her body it was under. Her lungs worked over time to push oxygen to that rushing blood, but all it did was narrow Acubens’ vision to a nasty black tunnel through which she could only see the black asphalt below her. Her chest was on fire. The pain from the glass in her hands and legs sharpened to a high-pitched wail that echoed through her whole body. There was nothing but the panic and the endless pain that ravaged her body for endless moments before, just as quickly as it had come over her, it was gone, leaving Acubens limp and sobbing on the pavement.
This was why she could not go home right this moment. This was why she had to stay out. Misha deserved a functioning sister. And Acubens would never be that for him ever again. The realization washed away the panic, leaving Acubens with something even more terrifying than the ice-cold sadness and white-hot fury of panic. It left her feeling hollow. The tears vanished at long last, leaving her curled up on the sidewalk alone with her numbness. This certainly was new but… she wasn’t sure that she disliked it… in fact…
She didn’t.
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Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2015 8:53 pm
Time To Go
Word Count -- 560
Acubens was covered in wreckage from the evening. Burns began to form welts on her arms and legs. Her fuku was torn and stained. Glass sparkled like wicked little thorns waiting for an unwitting hand to try and brush them away. Blood traced the tributaries of her veins against her skin from wounds too numbered to count. If there was any pain, Acubens didn’t feel any. She was… in a word… lost. The flaming, glorious death of the monster who had driven her to such extremes still burning brightly against the dark of the night. She saw nothing but the glowing halo he had left behind, seared into her retinas. The scent of his flesh burning, the sound of it ripping and popping. His demise wrapped itself around her nerves and senses like a snake, sinking it’s fangs deeper and deeper into her heart as it coiled tighter and tighter around her. The more she tried to escape it, the more it crushed her.
What now?
Acubens cast sightless eyes around her, searching the night for something. Anything. A sign or a scream or a neon blinker telling her what to do. There was only the crushing serpent of night. And it kept its silence. Acubens should have expected as much. Gods alive, she wished that she could feel something. She wished that there was… anything. Pain would even be a welcome reprieve from this terrifying numbness… at least then she would know that she was alive.
She must be dead. That was the only reasonable explanation for what was going on. She was dead and this was hell. This would be her torment. Endless night, an eon for each life that she snuffed out for just a chance to beat someone that she knew better than to engage with. Had she never come to blows with Bischofite then none of this would have happened. He wouldn’t have made her his little pet project. She would never have been blooded. Those civilians wouldn’t have been casted aside to die by her hand.
By my hand.
There was no rationale. But then, no rationale would ever bring them back. It would never wash the blood from her hands. It would never bring her peace. No a single second of it had been worth it. Bischofite would never have died by her hand. It was never his fate. His destiny was that his own misery would consume him, and as much as she wanted the threads of her life to be intertwined with his, they never would be.
She could have even loved him.
When everything was stripped away, there had been obsession, fixation, passion, fire, unadulterated purity of emotion. At the end of the day hate was as good as love, wasn’t it? Acubens had never understood that until this moment. This was, perhaps, Bischofite’s last revelation for her.
One of his last.
Hot on the heels of the understanding of what she had felt for him came the oppressive understanding that her court would never ever take her back. Acubens gazed at her hands like they were still soaked in the blood of innocent lives. She had nowhere to go. Acubens halted in her path to god only knew where. Nowhere to go.
No.
She had on place that she could go.
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Posted: Tue Jan 06, 2015 5:45 pm
So This is Home?Word Count -- 514
Acubens had assured Leto that she would be alright. She hadn’t really intended to lie but… well it hadn’t been a lie. She truly thought that she would be alright. It was just that Acubens hadn’t really understood what corruption meant. She passed reflections of herself in mirrored windows and paused for long seconds to inspect the woman before her. Black bodice. Black stockings. Long, violet bauze flowing behind her. She passed the ethereal material through new fingers and wondered with new eyes. Precious metal had been replaced with earthy stones, set deep against skin like ivory. She pressed her fingertips into the softness of her cheeks. New flesh meeting new flesh. It was odd, like touching and being touched by a stranger. Beyond that, her body no longer knew it’s own boundaries. Somehow this body was longer. Or was it shorter? Slimmer or wider? It was different. Acubens knew that the way she kept catching her toes on the pavement. In the way that she kept scraping the wicked claws of her pumps against her calves. In the way that the ground look both too far away from and too close to her eyes.
But the most significant change was one that Acubens had not been expecting.
The feeling of her fuku against her skin. It wasn’t made out of anything that her other fuku hadn’t been made of but… there was a sort of… calm woven into its fabric. She had itched sores into her flesh as a super and basic senshi but now… it was like a salve against a pox. Her skin hummed and purred through the fabric of her uniform, a calm sound beneath a sea of black and gauze. It was… odd… to not feel the legs of a thousand invisible insects crawling over her body as her fuku rested against her skin. It was… reassuring. It made the stranger’s face looking back at her from the mirror less foreboding. She would get to know this new woman that she shared a body with. She would learn all of her curves and softness. She would learn hre rigidity and her flexibility. She would learn her mind, body, and spirit.
And then she would learn every single thing that she could about her new court.
My new court.
The words slipped into her mind like a band of silk and wrapped her up in a cocoon. This was her court now. She had finally come home. And if she had to live on the streets for a little while before she find a place to rest her head, then so be it.
This was enough for her, right now.
And as she powered down into a body she did not know and used hands that she did not recognize to build a makeshift shelter out of boxes and tarps she knew that it would always be enough. She could have not a penny to her name, an acre of land, a single iota of material wealth but she would always have her court.
She had come home.
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Posted: Sat Apr 11, 2015 6:52 pm
Home Sweet HomeWord Count --- 1224
Since Raven's disappearance, Rhona had felt an inexplicable fire in her belly. Something tingling just under her diaphragm that kept her from keeping still. Kept her up at night. Kept her moving. She paced endlessly about Jett's apartment, trying to figure out what it meant until she couldn't think straight anymore. Dizzying thoughts spun out in spirals down down down into disorder and rambled all night into her ear about what should and could be. If she could not protect Lesath in person, then she would protect her from where she was. But what did that mean? Making the town right for her return? Rhona couldn’t hope to do something so drastic in such a short time. Make the home Raven shared with Jett perfect? It wasn’t really her place. She looked at Jett in silence for answers but he never gave her any. He didn’t have them even for himself, it seemed, with Raven gone. It probably didn’t help that she never really asked what the next step should be…
In the end, Rhona left Jett. Not in the same way she left Misha, leaving into the night to fight monsters and never coming home again. She gave a proper goodbye and a good long hug, promising that she'd be back when she was useful. Whatever that meant.
She supposed, looking up into the night sky from her alleyway-c**-home, that it meant getting her own place. Sure, her current abode was fine… for her. It had a tarp tacked up overhead to keep most of the rain out, and a tossed out mattress in the middle (less chance of getting rained on). But it wasn’t really… respectable. Respectable was an apartment. That, of course, meant she needed money, which lead to a job. The only problem was that to have a job she needed a birth certificate and a social security number. Which stopped that plan dead in its tracks. It actually also stopped her dead in her tracks also, as she was making her normal circuit around her lean-to.
That was, until Rhona remembered what she was. That led to an idea. It lead to a wonderful idea. It lead to a wonderful, magical idea. At night she would grant those who wandered the street rest. She used to station to draw out the toxins and leave the mind of those wretched souls at ease and left them sleeping on the curb. It wouldn't be too much trouble to ask for a tax, would it? A small sleeping tax of whatever bills were in the wallet of her "clients," as she called them. No credit cards, what would she do with those? And no jewelry, you never knew what was sentimental. Only the bills were taken, and even in the age of card payments, Rhona soon found herself with enough money for a deposit on a small apartment. It was not in the best part of town, but it had a small kitchen, a bathroom, and a bedroom.
And it was hers. And that was the first step.
Rhona didn’t have much to her name right now. Just a box full of clothes Raven had helped her buy so that she had something for her back and a handful of trinkets that she’d lifted from her brief stint on the street. Little knick-knacks that she was fond of like a, ornate candlestick that would need more than a little polish and a ceramic vase with flowers painted along the base. So when she walked into her new apartment, purchased with the help of her new family, it felt very… empty. The walls were all white, and while the high ceilings may have been desirable to someone with things to fill the walls, they made Rhona feel like she was living in a plaster cave. She hugged the box closer to herself and looked around, trying to find out how she was going to fill the walls and empty space.
Suddenly, though not for the first time, Rhona began to feel odd about her choices. Not regretful, persay but… odd. First it had been the new feeling of her own power, changed fundamentally by the mirror she had been baptized in. And then it had been having no place to call her own. After that, her lack of a name caused her discomfort. Now… When Rhona was Micah, she had always had… things. Possessions that had defined her. She liked dinosaurs, so she had collected a small army of little plastic dinosaur toys. She also had her collection of CDs that she never listened to, but still kept for the memories. She had posters and photos and artwork, all artifaacts of who she was and where she had been.
There were no such artifacts for Rhona Lee.
She was an infant, born into this world so recently that she had left no footprint. If she were to drop dead at this instant, no one would know who she was or what she was like. They would only have bare plaster walls and a tiny plastic egg she’d found in an alley a week ago.
She didn’t even have furniture. No chairs or couches, not even a bed to lay on. She had an air mattress that would serve until she could afford something else. As she walked through the apartment, her footsteps echoed off the walls as though to laugh at her. Somehow, as she had imagined this moment, she skipped a head to when she magically had everything that she would need to make a home. She never stopped to think about how she would get those things.
She could ask Jett and Raven for a hand but… no. Between how prideful she still was and how much she did not want to be a burden, she pushed the thought away. She would continue to collect funds they way she had been up to this point. It wasn’t like she could get a real job, Rhona Lee had no identification. No birth certificate, no social security card, nothing. Maybe later down the line, she could get those… claim to have been homeless until recently or something… how did she go about even doing that?
The overwhelming what if’s began to pile up no Rhona again, causing her to stop mid-step and collect herself. No. This hadn’t been a mistake. It couldn’t have been. Not when it felt so right when she powered up. Not when she felt so right when she looked at Jett and Raven and felt so at home. But there was still the fact that she could no longer recognize her own reflection, nor the sound of her own voice.
Rhona set the little box down on the floor of what might someday be a bedroom and sighed heavily. The window before her filled the room with light as she stared out and down into the street below. It was just another riddle. Another puzzle. She had precious few pieces, but she at least had some. Her name was Rhona Lee. She was 18 years old. She was a Dark Mirror Eternal. She was loved. And she loved back.
That was more than some people could say.
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Posted: Tue Jun 09, 2015 10:22 am
Headpiece Filled with StrawWord Count --- 819Rhona has searched for it for days in the obituaries. She knew it would be a while before anything popped up -- her parents would spend every possible iota of energy searching for their daughter. However, as much as she searched for it and waited for it and expected it, what she did not expect was the sudden punch to the gut it gave her. Quote: In Memory of Our Beautiful Daughter: After having been missing for nearly 3 months, Mrs Marcia Ann Driscoll and Mr. Grayson Edward Driscoll will lay their daughter Micah Elizabeth Ann Driscoll to rest at St Mary’s Catholic Church on Friday, January 24th, 2014. Close relations only. Rhona felt suddenly short of breath, having to take a seat on her couch to avoid tipping over as the world tilted this way and that. She’d been looking for this. Waited for it. Expected it. If she had been so prepared, then why did she suddenly feel like all of the life had been sucked out of her? Moments passed like quicksand, slipping by her as she sat in the quiet of her new home. Slowly, agonizingly, her mind worked over what she was now learning. Her parents -- her former parents -- were going to bury her. But not her. She walked around in the body that they would otherwise bury. They would be burying an empty casket -- a physical manifestation of the gaping wound that they would never find closure for. A wrecked sob escaped Rhona’s lips before she could stop it with her hand, and shivers convulsed through her. She had done this to her family. She had robbed them of that closure. But she had done that to protect them, right? Yes, this would hurt them, but it would hurt far more if her enemies got hold of them, right? She had made the right choice. Right? And yet for all her rationalization, the pain never once stopped. It never once let her breathe through the sobs that ruined her. It never once stopped it’s death march through her body, scorching every inch of earth and flesh it could find. It was like a physical pain, an ache in every bone that creaked and cracked as it settled in. The pain laid her violent soul bare for her -- not a wild fighting thing, but something hollow and stuffed. It made her feel so sick that after a moment the need to expel the contents of her stomach overruled the deep, throbbing ache in her bones and she ran for the bathroom. Vomit splashed messily into the toilet as Rhona screamed her sickness. She didn’t have time nor presence of mind to hold her hair back, and red curls became tangled and sopped in the viscera. Rhona wasn’t sure how long she sat, huddled a shroud of her own misery. Long enough for her hips to complain of the tile and her back to ache in it’s bend. When she finally did rise, it was slow and creaking -- A shapeless, colorless thing, moving not from will or action, but from momentum alone. She shambled and stumbled like the dead thing that she was and fell weeping into the shower to wash herself of her sickness. She had long since resolved to attend her own funeral, but now that the date had been set and the flowers had been ordered… her resolve was quickly circling the drain. It would be a rite of passage, her romantic brian had whispered in the night as it felt out new boundaries of hands and feet. A cleaning of self. A washing of sins. A rising from ashes. Now, however, in the cold light of day she realized how intrusive the notion was. She was, after all, a stranger to the people gathered to mourn her. No… no mourn Micah. Though she knew the girl better than all of them combined, she still had no right to be there. And yet there still remained a cord tied around her wrist. Looking down, she could see it bright red and pulsing against her flesh. Rhona dressed with numb arms and heavy legs, pulling on clothes that no longer fit her, taken from an apartment in which she no longer lived. She glanced with unseeing eyes at trinkets and pretty things that no longer struck her fancy. Pieces of a stolen life upon which she looked from death’s other kingdom. Without thinking, listening only to the wind in her suddenly straw-filled skull, Rhona shuffled along the path the red cord laid out for her. She knew there it led, of course she did. She had always known where it led. Her mother… Micah’s mother… had tied that cord herself on the first day of kindergarten. A small bracelet of bright red string and a promise that no matter how far away Micah wandered, there would always be a way home.
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Posted: Tue Jun 09, 2015 10:25 am
Eyes I Dare Not Meet in Dreams
Word Count -- 1404
Houses passed and Rhona barely noticed them. Distantly, she realized that it would have been easier to hail a taxi but then the thought passed through her like a breeze and was gone. If her legs ached, she didn't notice. If her lungs burned, she didn’t care. All signals that she was alive despite the funeral she was about to attend, uninvited.
Eyes she dared not meet floated before her vision as she walked -- a terrible waking nightmare. Voices singing on the wind tickled at her ears, reminding her of the long road of sin that lead her to her final betrayal.
Her mind didn’t come back to itself until she reached the funeral home.
A typical construction of old Victorian architecture with none of the bold coloring. Instead, the owners had wisely chosen to keep to muted tones of beige and cool grey on the outside. The door opened without a sound and Rhona was welcomed with the scent of potpourri, cool tones of pastel blue and that same soft grey, and a kind-looking middle-aged man.
“You are here for Ms. Driscoll,” he asked softly. All Rhona could do was nod unblinkingly. The man inclined his head sympathetically, inferring all the wrong reasons for Rhona’s numbness. But he leads the way all the same, leaving Rhona in a parlor filled with flowers and one lone casket.
The blood in Rhona’s veins turned to ice. What had she expected, really? She knew what she was coming here to do. To see. And yet, in all her imaginings, she hadn’t thought to include the image of a coffin -- her coffin. It sat so benignly, and yet the edges of Rhona’s vision began to creep in as she stared, lock-jawed and weak-kneed. The earth tilted beneath her feet and she stumbled forward not of her own accord. Was she crying? Her cheeks were wet, and so that must have meant that she was crying but she felt so removed from her own self that she might as well have been lying in that casket, watching this poor facsimile of who she once was shambled over.
It’s empty she reminded herself. The body that would have otherwise have been buried was shivering over the wood, holding itself together with arms and will alone. The casket before her was empty and she knew it, and that sent a whole new wave of sickness through her. The same way she hadn’t realized that there would be a coffin at the funeral, Rhona had failed -- or perhaps refused -- to connect that fact that she still wore her own body with the fact that her family needed something to bury.
It’s empty her hollow mind reminded her. It’s empty because of you.
Rhona wanted to run. She wanted to flee and hide and be no closer to death’s dream kingdom than she already was, straddling that border and lingering in death’s twilight. She wanted to hide from it all and yet her hand reached out again not of her own will but of something else entirely. She rested a hand on the cool smooth lacquer and her whole body ached.
Her family had done well by her. Oak wood with little adornment. A box for her to rest in.
Or it should have been.
The lid of the casket made no sound as she lifted it and the hinges bore most of the weight, making for little work on Rhona’s part. It was, she had to admit, well made.
It took Rhona a moment to realize what it was she was looking at. After all, when one opens the lid of a casket they expect to see a corpse. And her mind tried to make what she was seeing fit that expectation, despite the fact that there was not -- could not -- be a body.
Sand bags
Assumedly 145 pounds of sandbags. Something to give the casket enough weight to fool the pall bearers into thinking there was a body inside. A cruel and calculated lie to bring comfort to a family that would know no such thing for the rest of their days.
You did this to them
How had Rhona not made this connection? How had she not seen this coming? How had she managed to romanticize this process so completely that she was left bare and unready for the horror that it really was? Of course it would be empty. And of course, they would deliberately disguise the emptiness of the box with enough sandbags to make for a convincing lie.
She shouldn’t be here. She was too close… to close to death. Her own narrowly escaped and now heartlessly foisted on her loved ones. She shouldn’t be here.
The soft sound of the door opening shocked Rhona out of her own misery and caused her to drop the lid. The hinges bore most of the weight, and the lid dropped softly back down.
“Excuse me?”
The voice was cold and hard, but Rhona knew it. She knew it saying a thousand different things. She knew it in all its incarnations, even this one. She knew it like she knew the dark waves that fell around slender shoulders that Rhona herself had inherited.
No.
Rhona was broader now. Micah had inherited those shoulders. And the icy stare of the woman in the doorway. Micah had also inherited her bright yellow eyes, and the toxic glow that anger injected into them.
“Excuse me, what are you doing here?”
Rhona stood, shocked into painful silence as the woman that she used to call her mother glared at her. She looked to the man at her shoulder, with hair the same color as Micah’s. He had none of the anger in his eyes, but Rhona had never seen the man looking so haggard. The boy who looked like the girl she used to be stood next to the man, watching Rhona is piercing yellow eyes.
A pulsing red band circled each of their wrists, leading right back to Rhona.
Ice ran down Rhona’s body, rushed through her veins, and froze her heart. Her family. No, damn, ******** it -- Micah’s family. She couldn’t lay claim to them any longer. Had no right to. No matter how much she wanted to run into her mother’s arms and let loose the bone-shattering sobs that she barely contained behind her teeth. No matter how much she wanted to wipe the tears from her father’s cheeks and hold him close like he used to hold her when she had nightmares. No matter how much she wanted to take Misha’s face in her hands and remind him who she was. Scream her new name at the top of her lungs and prove to them that they hadn’t lost their daughter. She’d just changed faces.
No matter how much she longed, with all of her heart, to ease their suffering and their pain and their torment… she had to remember why she made the choices that she made. Why she had left them. Why she had no other options.
Marcia crooked an eyebrow, clearly finished waiting, and began to approach Rhona.
"I-I-I think... lost... I thought... someone else..."
Her voice, still new in her own ears, sounded as foreign as the first time she’d used it on the night she came home.
"Young lady, you have the wrong place. We are here to bury my daughter," the word tore itself painfully from Rhona's mother and slammed itself into Rhona it enough force to cause her to curl in on herself. "I don't know who you are looking for, but they aren't here."
Yes they are. Dark feathers of crowskin settled on Rhona’s shoulders, reminding her who she was. What she had done. She huddled into death’s deliberate disguise, closing her new green eyes to hide from what once was hers.
The air around her stirred and she felt Micah’s mother blow past her, presumably to the casket at the other end of the room. The scent of her perfume pulled a single wrecked sob from her chest and nothing more.
Maybe that was what dissolved the roots encircling her feet. That single sounds that came from deep within her unlocked her legs and sent her stumbling forward, pushing blindly past Micah’s father and brother, the red cord trailing behind her.
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Posted: Tue Jun 09, 2015 10:26 am
From Prayers to Broken Stone
Word Count -- 1818
Micah had grown up Catholic, and so it seemed only fitting that her final service be in that style. Her parents had opted for a full service, with Catholic mass after the wake. Rhona had slipped in, unnoticed, and had concealed herself in the alcove of the twelfth station.
As the wake proceeded, Rhona allowed her eyes to wander the church she had grown up in anew. At the front of the worship space loomed the heavy crucifix of iron and polished wood, a beautiful work of art that always worried Micah. She asked her mother every Sunday when she was younger why it never came crashing down. It looked so heavy, she would remark. How does it stay up? And her mother would smile and point to the nearly invisible wires from which the crucifix was suspended. Just because you can’t see the support, she whispered in the reverent silence of the mass, doesn’t mean it’s not there.
Still, Micah would wonder how slender wires could hold up such a massive working of metal and wood. It seemed impossible to her.
She also recalled how sad the Savior looked. It never seemed fitting. The pain made Micah screw up her face with anger. It made her scream and rave and rage. Why did Jesus always look so sad? This time Micah’s father would answer. He’s not sad for himself, Little Bird. He’s sad for us. And when Micah would ask why the adults would chuckle and answer her by counting the sins of man. Micah supposed that made sense. He was, after all there to save them. And then they killed him.
The stations of the cross were equally opulent, which as a teenager Micah found fault with. A church was a house of humility and reverent absolution. Why then were the stations crafted from expensive wood and metal? Wouldn’t a simple painting have been enough? Her parents would only sigh and nod, but remind her that if they can pay tribute to Christ and his sufferings, then we should. The works of art that were their stations of the cross were like the tributes of gold and silver to the old gods. We can, and so we should. Micah didn’t like that answer as much as the others she got.
And she didn’t like them now.
What did it matter, Rhona wondered, praying to iron and wood? The supplications of the dead and dying meant nothing to the stone images in the alcoves around the church. Like the constant pleas to a distant and faded star.
And what did it matter, Rhona wondered, to whisper goodbyes to a weighted casket? Everyone knew that nothing lay inside the box at the front of the church. And even if it did contain a body. Even if the lid were lifted and Micah herself lay within, a strange recreation of life using paints and oils, what did it matter? They may as well be whispering sins and promises to iron and stone at this point.
Iron eyes bored into her back as Christ hung on his cross, addressing his mother and the Magdalen. Motionless lips hung frozen in speech while the women sobbed without a sound below him. Rhona didn’t need to turn to know what was behind her. She knew. She knew as much as she knew the feeling of Micah’s mother’s rosary between her fingers while she prayed. Those prayers wrote themselves out in her memory, triggered by a pavlovian response that Rhona hadn’t realized she had.
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.
Ten times, over and over, the prayer repeated itself as the images of the first station replayed in her mind. The meditation in the garden. Knowing that he was going to die, how Christ asked his father for another way out.
The Lord’s Prayer.
Had she done the right thing? Had Rhona truly made the best choice given her circumstances? Could she not have simply set her pen aside and renounced her powers? Given in to a life with Misha and her parents? Gotten married and settled down to have a family of her own? Keep her own name and her own face and her own eyes? Had there been another way?
Ten Hail Mary’s as the second station begot the image of Judas’ betrayal. How Judas kissed the Savior and the Romans arrested him.
The Lord’s Prayer.
It didn’t matter what she could have done. She did it. She kissed her brother goodbye and left under the power of her star. She watched the monster she had hunted burn. She found Leto and she came home. She left them all for that.
Ten Hail Mary’s at the third station to contemplate the condemnation of the elders. You say that I am, Jesus said, and the elders called him guilty.
The Lord’s Prayer
Micah’s grandmother moved slowly now, slower than usual, as she approached the casket. She was close enough to hear the old woman weeping, “I can’t believe that she’s dead…” Her grandfather offered what comfort he could and they moved on.
Ten Hail Mary’s for the denial of Peter. I do not know this man, he cried as he was asked about Jesus. And then the c**k crowed, and Peter wept bitterly.
The Lord’s Prayer
Misha would have been the one to hold out longest, Rhona supposed. The one to believe that his sister lived somewhere in the city. So it hadn’t come as a surprise to her when white moon senshi who learned her name told her about a young man with hair like hers looking for a senshi by that same name. She should have gone to him. She should have sought him out and took him in her arms and at least given him the comfort of knowing that she was alive, just different. But she did not. And now her reflection sobbed through his eulogy as he bid his sister goodbye.
Ten Hail Mary’s as Jesus is judged by Pilate. Are you the king of the jews? You say that I am. And Pilate asked the crowd who should die? Barrabas or the Son of God? The crowd spoke and Barrabas left the palace.
The Lord’s Prayer.
Micah’s father gave a touching recounting her life, from birth to the last time they saw her alive. He wished that it had been him. Rhona had never seen him cry. The man was led from the podium by his son, still cursing god that he drew breath while his daughter lay in her shallow and unmarked grave. Rhona wept bitterly.
Ten Hail Mary’s while the soldiers beat Christ and weave him a crown the thorns.
The Lord’s Prayer.
Why was Rhona doing this? This was supposed to be a cleansing and a rising. It felt like a torment the likes of which she would not wish on her worst enemy. Her head was throbbing so hard that her vision swam with each beat of her own heart. Her joints screamed for rest. Her nerves crackled and frayed erratically. She should leave. And yet she remained bolted to the spot.
Ten Hail Mary’s as the crowd cries for the crucifixion of Christ. Jesus is given his cross and he bares it.
The Lord’s Prayer.
Rhona could still remember the angry glares of the senshi she was supposed to be fighting with. And all she did was ask why the Dark Mirror Court was so bad. She could remember the hissing of her name behind clenched teeth and the way they called her a traitor. No bother to explain why she may have been misplaced in her trust. No attempts to talk to her. Just condemnation. It was no wonder she left that night, she supposed.
Ten Hail Mary’s as Simon the Cyrenian helps Christ to carry his cross.
The Lord’s Prayer.
Home was where she went. She had to remember that. When she came to Remarque and Leto with questions, they sat down with her and the answered. Something her own faction could not say for her. She gave them her burdens and her worries and they laid them on their own shoulders so that she could walk. She went home.
Ten Hail Mary’s as Jesus comforts the mourning women.
The Lord’s Prayer.
Rhona thought suddenly of Lenka. The way the younger senshi had looked at her when Rhona stepped from the shadows, clad in black and gauze. God, Rhona had tried so hard to make her understand. Tried so hard to tell Lenka not to worry about her, that she didn’t have a choice. That she did this for her. For her family. For everyone. Why hadn’t Lenka listened?
Ten Hail Mary’s. Jesus is crucified.
The Lord’s Prayer.
Why hadn’t anyone listened? She had tried so hard, and she fought for so long. She weighed her options and her paths and chose the one that she thought best for her and those around her. She could not stand idly by while people like Bischofite knew and hated her. She could not allow her brother to be attacked by a wayward youma again. She could not bare that mantle. She had to go. Micah had to die. There was no other way.
Ten Hail Mary’s for the good thief to whom Jesus promised the Kingdom of God. Remember me when you come into your kingdom. Amen, and you shall be with me in paradise.
The Lord’s Prayer.
It had been a bloody night, Rhona remembered. She was sliced and beaten from the shrapnel of Bischofite’s blaze of glory. She stung from the knowledge that she had not killed him -- he had done that himself. And she told Leto everything. When she was spent and sobbing and gasping for air, Leto took her in her arms and carried her through the mirror. And Rhona knew she had done right then just as she knew it now. Micah could not exist after that night.
Ten Hail Mary’s for the Virgin, the Magdalen, and the disciple. Woman behold your son. Behold your mother.
The Lord’s Prayer.
Rhona hadn’t expected Micah’s mother’s eulogy to be more painful that her father’s. Marcia Ann Driscoll was a strong woman, and yet her voice quivered as she spoke. Her chin trembled. No mother should have to bury her daughter, but I am not even allowed that simple comfort. Today I lay to rest a box of sand and pray to god that we were wrong. You were wrong, mom. I’m right here. The words beat against her teeth and slammed against her ribs, but she silenced them with a hollow swallow. Misha came up to meet her as he had his father and held her as she gave the rest of her eulogy. She leaned heavily on him as she left the pulpit.
Ten Hail Mary’s. Jesus dies.
The Lord’s Prayer.
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Posted: Thu Apr 13, 2017 7:34 pm
Gathered on this Beach of the Tumid River
Word Count -- 595
Ten Hail Mary’s. Jesus is entombed.
The Lord’s Prayer.
The pallbearers lifted Micah’s empty casket onto their shoulders and proceeded out, followed by a procession of mourners. Rhona followed behind, and if anyone saw her, they said nothing. The red cord around her wrist was beginning to burn as she walked, but she ignored it as the mourners ignored her.
Rhona moved without seeing.
Around her, stones shot up like jagged teeth from a broken jaw. Concrete blooms grown from seeds for grief.
Staring at the blackness of her vision, Rhona followed the red line leading from her wrist out before her like a path. Each step became more and more difficult, as though she herself were becoming a stone effigy. A stone without seeing. A stone with no eyes.
She came to a stop behind a tree across the path from the gathered mourners, groping together without speaking at this last meeting place. The last place they would ever see Micah again.
There were not eyes here, though. No eyes here to see the empty casket. They put her dying star of a body within the box as it was lowered in and wrapped the false comfort around their shoulders for warmth against the chill of Death’s Twilight Kingdom. Rhona wrapped it around herself and shivered in the cold.
It was an odd thing, Rhona remarked distantly to herself, to see your own casket lowered into the ground. A sensation no one else would be able to say they had felt. Or at the very least very few would. It was almost like being detached from oneself, like the mind refuses to realize what it is seeing. And when it finally does make the connection, the feeling of being hollowed out was so winding that Rhona had to lean hard on the tree she was behind.
The sound of earth striking the polished wood brought her back to her senses and reminded her of the burning around her wrist. Absently, she scratched at the flesh and felt nothing. She should be crying now, right? There should have been sorrow… right? Her mother had buried herself in her father’s shoulder and Misha was staring down into the grave, expressionless. Should she not too be distraught?
The cord around her wrist seared her wrist and Rhona rubbed the skin again, checking to be sure she was only imagining the sound of sizzling flesh. Now her father was crying again, wrapping her mother in his arms as though to protect her from the truth. Misha had turned away.
He was walking away. Hands jammed into his pockets and lips moving in some silent reverie. She could see his eyes bloodshot from fatigue and misery. His foot struck a nearby stone as though to release some unseen pressure, but it didn’t work. Rhona knew it didn’t work. There was still a muscle working in his jaw slowly grinding his teeth to dust.
Rhona felt the sudden burst of white-hot pain around her wrist, causing her to whimper. Misha looked around but did not see her.
The mourners began to trickle away, offering condolences and gestures to her parents as they did so. The freshly turned earth offered no such kindness. Rhona could hear her mother’s frantic sobbing and her father’s painful moaning. At the car, Misha sniffed and cuffed at his nose, brows furrowed in a heavy line across his eyes.
And then they left. Rhona watched them go with stone eyes.
She glanced at her feet to see a loop of red resting complacently in the grass.
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