tears flowed like wine / xov, day 5

[august vance d7b [Bella]]

⤜ x o v - ♥ - t h a o ⟶

Pine and cedar were the closest thing to incense Xov could find to burn before they took him. Fingers sticky with tree sap, she lit the small pile near Juno’s head, blew softly on the embers until they caught the resin. Sending a prayer into the heavens with the fragrant smoke, she thought it almost smelled like home.

She wished she had learned what home meant to him, too, so she could give him a better goodbye than this one. At their family funerals, the Thaos offered sacrifice, called the dead home with bells, feasted and drank and cried until they were nearly unconscious. She even considered sacrificing Gus, but she thought maybe all of that would have seemed like overkill to Juno.

He was lying there, face sliced in half, arms at his sides. No fanfare, no pageantry.

The once-frozen lake heaved and rumbled beside them, warm now, awake. Xov could do nothing but scowl at it, its expanse of blue that watched both her friends die, silent and indifferent. Did it take them too? she had to wonder, imagining the water pulling Marcus and Juno’s souls out like a magnet with its gravity.

But no, she knew whose fault it was that they were gone. Their faces were burned like sun-spots in her mind’s eye. Lucky. Garnet.

The only credit she would give Lucky was that he, unlike Garnet, hadn’t whimpered like a kicked dog while he dealt Marcus his final blow. The only direct address Juno had received came from the mouth of the cannon.

At a training center pool party in another lifetime, Lucky saw how she froze in apprehension when faced with the water’s uncertain depths. She hadn’t taken the time to explain to him that it was common sense not to tempt something that big to swallow you. Maybe he would have thought that was funny.

Now, she thought her greatest fear was the opposite: emptiness, this heavy hollow place where a boy had been just a moment ago.

Still she knelt and held Juno’s one hand in her two. Even as the air grew warmer, his fingers were already like ice.

”Thank you for taking care of me,” she muttered. A confession bloomed in her throat, a bittersweet ache. ”You made me feel like we really had a chance. You made me braver than I thought I could be. I promise I won’t waste the strength you gave me.”

When the tears came, she let them, but held her knees to keep them from shaking. They felt like nothing but bones. Two bent twigs with doorknobs on the ends, so thin they might break under the weight of so many words unsaid.

”I’m going to try to get out of here,” she told him loud enough that both their families could hear.

Xov decided she wouldn’t call out to his soul here, like she had done for Marcus. If she waited until she made it back to Twelve, she could ask his parents for all the right directions.

Trembling hands pulled his wrist up to her lips, her canine teeth latching onto the loop of thread she’d tied there. She bit hard, pulled until she heard it snap, tasting dried blood on the fibers.

”Ok. You can go now,” she whispered, a tiny smile playing at her lips. The image of their first meeting on the train played in her head like an old movie reel.

Is that what souls do? Juno had asked. Wander off at a moment’s notice?

If he was here, she’d tell him his stayed on longer than most.

”Bye, J. If all goes well, I won’t be seeing you.”

She folded Juno’s hands across his chest and forced herself to turn away, otherwise she knew she would stay there frozen, immobile, as long as she would allow herself. Ten paces towards the lake as they lifted him away behind her back.

Xov felt a dull sense of disdain towards the water that lapped against the rocks like a dried-up childhood rivalry, the reason for the initial hatred all but forgotten.

”You’re still here?” It was an observation more than a question, spoken mostly to herself. She didn’t know if the water here was alive like the water in Twelve—had no idea what forces governed its will. She spoke to it through tears, drunkenly, gesturing with her hands.

”Water. All you ever do is take. Take and wash away,” Everything she was holding slipping through her fingers. Marcus and Juno. Her family. Her time.

Before she knew what she was planning, the sharp edge of her pike edged closer to the nape of her neck.

One hand gathered all her hair, matted and blood-soaked, into a fist—the other drew the blade across the strands. RRRRRRRRIIIP. She threw the mass of hair into the water, where it lingered on top for a moment, then floated down gently into the dark blue depths.

She continued working around her head, taking hair off in chunks and throwing it into the water until all that was left of the velvety black mane that used to bring her so much pride was a choppy black bird’s nest sticking out in all directions. But at least she got all the dried blood out.

”There. Take it. Now we’re even. That’s all you’ll get of me,” she warned the water.

Her reflection stared back at her from the edge of the pool. It was crazy the difference five days and a bad haircut could make. But then again, she wasn’t that Xov anymore. Instead, she felt like some three-headed person, carrying with her the two friends that had died so she could live.

So be it. She didn’t want to be a martyr. She just wanted to live like they had wanted her to. So she would.

She turned her back to the water, that old world foe. And she kept going.