into the world (Calliope & Arthur) [Galaxy's funeral]

[shrimp]

His daughter is beautiful, dressed in what looks like pure gold - it sparkles every time she twitches or shakes her leg and her hair's all done up in an intricate bun, exactly how Rose would always wear it. It's uncanny to watch, like they're both back from the dead and he can see Galaxy's shoulders rise and fall every time she breathes.

She's immediately combative with Caesar Flickerman, refusing to let him address her by her first name and he's got to hand it to the man, he can make almost anything seem like a great joke. Galaxy's responses are, at the very least, honest ("Is there anyone special at home-" "Special what do you mean by special? If you're gonna ask me if I'm seeing anyone just be straight out with it." "Well well, we've got a feisty one here with us tonight folks." The audience laughs).

"Well, Miss Rose-Clements, do you miss anything in particular from back home?"

There's a pause before she responds. "Everything."

He turns the television off, slowly rubbing his temples.

The building isn't empty tonight, he can hear custodians sweeping the floors and in the next room over he hears one of his colleagues berating someone about laboratory safety - it's probably an intern. But they never enter his office any more without knocking three times and waiting for him to open the door. They must know that he'll want to hide his spare set of clothes and can of dry shampoo in his desk drawer, or his pillow in the filing cabinet. it's better that way, to pretend like nothing's wrong because if they ask he'll tell them to get back to work, that nothing's wrong.

Even he knows he's lying to himself. This evening, he logs off of his computer, nearly filled to capacity with 15 years of lab data, takes the bus back home to grab his suit (and a package that he's moved from under her bed to the dining room table), before heading towards the Justice Building. The officials look at him with disdain, but he knows why. Hardly anybody else has ever put up such a fight to keep their daughter from being sent back down into the earth. Lots of paperwork was required.

Quite a few people have shown up to the funeral service. There's the astronomers that Galaxy interned under (the department sits together, a deja vu 11 years in the making having washed over them), the mayor, peacekeepers, teachers - not many classmates, maybe just one. Only one really mattered to Galaxy anyway. Praxis doesn't seem to have shown up yet and he's relieved.

They had asked him to speak at her ceremony, and he hadn't known what to do when all of his words had been wasted on yelling at her just to convince a girl just as stubborn as he was to change her ways so that she would live a life worth living. All his words were wasted on begging to get Galaxy into the coma program, under the care of a man who was revered to be the best of the best, that if she were to ever awaken it would be under his care. All his words were wasted on empty rooms and empty hallways in a house as cold as death, and a television screen that hadn't yet discovered the capabilities for two way communication.

But he said yes anyway.

After the mayor speaks (formal, praising her bravery and her determination. Doesn't know her at all.), Galaxy's supervisor comes up for the entire astrology department with tears in her eyes and a shaky breath - she notes on how inspired Galaxy was by her mother, how she always worked to finish the humongous starsheet Rose had mapped out for herself. After her death the entire team worked together for a week nonstop, and now it's finished.

They've even brought it with them, draping it over her coffin like a blanket (after she steps down, she whispers to Arthur that they've kept a carbon copy in their records, that his family's research won't have been in vain. He says thank you, even though he knows that she knows how little he truly cares about it all - Galaxy must have spouted something or other in the 3 years she worked there).

It's his turn afterwards, and he steps up to the podium with shaking hands and knees that would prefer to not have weight on them.

"Thank you for coming." He coughs once before continuing.

"When Rose and I would take Galaxy out stargazing - she was maybe 4 or 5 at the time - she would always remark on how big it all was. That's why she told me she wanted to study astrology as well. 'It's so big,' she would say. 'I have to discover what's out there.' And so time after time she'd ignore me, I know you all know what I thought about Rose's occupation and I'm sure Galaxy affirmed it for you-"

He pauses as they laugh.

"She loved every minute she spent in the stars. Not everyone understood that, but she always did what she wanted to do. And when she fell off the observatory I thought that was all she would ever have done, spent her life above the clouds. But she woke up from that coma a few months ago, and last month she was home."

He pauses again, not because he wants to but because he has to.

"And I am happy that I was able to spend time with her again, even though it was cut short. We'll always cherish the wonderful moment's we've had with a wonderful girl."

He can't continue any longer, so he cuts off with a brisk thank you and walks back to his seat as the mayor concludes the ceremony and helps out when Galaxy's coffin is lifted and carried out of the building.

They trudge to the outskirts of the districts, where sidewalks end and metal gives way to dried patches of grass. There's a few people gathered around the pillars of wood and hay that have been stacked in a pile - many who've attended the service have opted out on attending the pyre. His coworkers were confused as well: the dramatic was never Arthur's flair. But he could never stand to send her back down into the darkness. She would be happier among the stars, among the seas and the forests and the rooftops and wherever the wind would take her.

He tries to keep thinking that when they light the pyre. And it erupts beautifully, bright and smoky and as loud as Galaxy was in life. Arthur watches it, watches as his daughter is let out into the atmosphere. There's loud chatter among the bystanders, some laughter - he doesn't mind, Galaxy wouldn't have wanted her funeral to be so serious.

He's standing next to a girl, a girl who he's spotted chatting with Galaxy when she was still cooped up in the ward. And if he has the name right, she's the one who Galaxy's package needs to be delivered to.

"Calliope?" He asks. It's more of a statement than a question - the two of them know who each other is, they've just never formally met.

"Thank you, for coming,"

[L△LIA]

people talk to me but nothing ever hits home people talk to me and all the voices just burn holes The same dress I wore to Aesop's funeral still hangs in my closet and the moment I crack the door open to look for it, I feel the memory of inky water dripping from my hands. Thin rivers of muddled black snake up my arms and salt trails strip my cheeks raw; my throat seizes up like choking; the light above the kitchen sink flickers in my bedroom ceiling. When I pick the hanger up and run my fingers down the side of the fabric it's dry, however, and my skin looks perfectly pale and unsullied against it. It used to be pastel and pretty with a floral design before it was dyed into mourning. Squinting, the flowers are just the ghosts of a disappearing act, like one of Aesop's coin or card tricks, except I can't see any magic in them anymore. Held up in front of the mirror, it looks strange next to the violent red of my chemically scorched hair and I can't help thinking that Galaxy would hate me for wearing this again. For her. For anyone. But especially for her. There are a hundred thousand million things I'm uncertain of, but I was never a black hole vortex to her before — just everyone else — and so I have to remember the stars. I pitch the dress onto a chair nestled in the corner beside the mirror and collapse back onto the bed. Teddy bears tumble around my head and I rummage through them blindly until I find the one that kept me company in the hospital waiting room the night of Galaxy's Finale. She has a heart shaped nose and patchy blue fur and it's a questionable kind of sky, but it's all I have. "I don't know anything about stars," I sigh in its ear, storing away my secret and waiting for an exchange of advice that will never come, "Nothing. Nadda. Zilch." Unblinking glass eyes stare back at me unhelpfully and I wind up just clutching it to my chest and staring at the nubby popcorn ceiling, at the sun-bleached pink curtains hanging over the window, at the awful black dress crumpled up in rejection in the corner. A white gift box peeks out from beneath the ugly black and when I reach out to yank it from beneath the funeral veil that very nearly swallowed it up whole, the ribbon tied around it is still perfect — gauzy sunshine yellow, tied up into the most ridiculous, resiliently frothy bow I could have ever have dreamed up as a little girl. Holding it is like another kind of flashback, except to daydreams instead of reality, when I still wore my hair in pigtails and pressed my nose against the dress shop windows downtown, wishing, like a single dress could be a kind of future. My fingers follow the yellow lines, taking in the texture of the satin ribbon as I chew on my lip, unreasonably nervous. It's not mine or even for me, no matter what Wolfgang said when he shoved it into my hands. This is a box containing an alternate reality where I am a girl who brushes her hair ten times a day and leaves kiss prints and heart drawings on fogged up window panes and giggles uncontrollably when one of the bad boys around town passes me by. Still, that giant bow unravels in my hands and the box lid lifts right off, even though I chain smoked cigarettes and swore til my lips should have gone numb on my unknowing way to buy this. Even if I were fifteen and frivolous again, I wouldn't be able to wear this though. Despite being covered in tiny hearts and flaring out in a giant ruffle at the bottom, it's cut for a woman's curves and Wolfgang is a psychopath because I know it's supposed to be beautiful, but it's also a torture device. I swore I wouldn't touch it. Yet, the next time I look up at the mirror, I'm standing in front of it with that dress hooked through my fingers, imagining wearing it. As if it isn't really there. As if it isn't really mine. As if my mirror is actually the window of a shop and I'm looking into a world of pretend again. "This is stupid." The more I look at it, the more the little white hearts look like stars against the black that doesn't look like mourning and when I finally put it on I'm wearing a night sky and Galaxy is promising me that I don't look weird with the hips I didn't even know I had and a chest that never would have fit into my high school uniform. "This is... stupid pretty." My hair is revolting, but I look like a girl who's grown up and I think I'd look pretty too if I could just stop ugly crying while collapsing to the floor. For thirty minutes I'm a sobbing, heaving, snot spewing wreck. This isn't a funeral dress and so it couldn't be more perfect, even though I'm late to the memorial service because of the struggle with it. Doesn't matter. The service turns out to be all people I don't know saying things about Galaxy I'm not sure I believe (except when a lady from the astronomy department and Galaxy's father speak — "And I am happy that I was able to spend time with her again, even though it was cut short."), but I just slouch against the back wall as officials in proper, all-black attire give me the dirty eye. I start a game with them. Each time I get shade thrown my way, I pull a piece of hard candy out of my pocket and pop it in my mouth. Red. Blue. Purple. Green. Yellow. Orange. It's a secret language that none of them know and the only thing that reassures me I'm right where I belong. If they knew Galaxy at all, they'd be asking me to share. Leaving is a little like being forcefully escorted out of the building, at least until people begin slipping off after realizing that the coffin we're following isn't headed back into a pit in the ground. Galaxy escaped that and she won't go back there again. Instead the few of us that remain are witnesses to a pyre. Even some of the people who have stayed seem to disapprove, but the second sparks fly I don't understand how anyone could think that way. The air bursts, flutters, and blooms with incredible brightness — it's alive, magic, and warm and for the first time since visiting her in the Justice Building, I feel like Galaxy is actually here. Taller, maybe; a little more grown up without knowing exactly when that happened and I want to promise her she doesn't look weird. She looks beautiful. "Calliope?" I'm one of the people with a smile on my face and an unexpected laugh roiling in my throat, hands thrown up with my palms pink against the flames. It's just my eyes, as bloodshot as my hair, that give me away as anything other than a misguided party crasher. "Thank you, for coming," It's her father. I flicker in place, like I've become part of the flames flashing through the air, gnawing at my lip and not knowing what to say, what to call him, whether or not he understands that for the first time in years, I'm not trying to be disrespectful, despite how I might appear. "Yeah," uncertainty drawls through the reply until it's little more than an exhalation as I blink at him, pushing my hands into the pockets of my jacket. "Candy?" I hold a hand out to him, a small plastic wrapped ruby of hard sugar sitting in the palm, because I don't know what to say to someone who has lost even more than me in this moment, regardless of my expertise in tragedy, but I know we share a language anyway.