some dreamers of a silver dream // cass.

[Cait]

december donner

They returned him to us as a box of bones, the last of a life sheltered in secrets captured in the hollows of eyes I couldn’t bring myself to look into. We’d seen it coming. Another loss of brother we barely knew, and from twelve to four to three, we quietly retired to empty bedrooms to collect the tears we’d been saving for goodbye, goodbye, g o o d b y e.

I’m not weak I’m not weak I’m not weak I promise you I’m not weak

Etchings, carved into plaster-wood. There’s a collage of scrawled desperations above my bed, for I was never brave enough to slice the hoarse words into my skin. Never brave enough for any act of courage that didn’t jeopardise something I didn’t deserve: life. Prickling my soles, the earth is ice, urging me forward when I’m stuck on the edge of a cliff and escape is only a waltz away.

It’s why I run. The heavy steps in walking thin lines are a burden – running is thoughtless, free. I’m left with butterflies in my stomach, in my mind, in my palms and fingertips and their beating wings cloud out that which is Marc’s voice, Marc’s kills, Marc’s collapsing on a tinny TV screen.

I stole a name when I wasn’t a thief with an unspoken right to all out of my reach. December Donner, it wasn’t enough of a homecoming. December Donner, and it almost feels like a new start, albeit one that ends in tragedy all the same. Some things we cannot change.

Some things make us stronger.

Some things are more right than we can ever understand them to be, and running under a new pretence down deserted streets more familiar than my heart can handle is l i g h t. Memories blur with the motion of the breathing ocean, removing the red from his hands that are my hands, staining my eyes grey with sidewalk souls. Back to unfamiliar familiarity; back to familiar unfamiliarity.

It’s more home than I think our battered recluse can ever be to me, now.

I carry him with all our other losses, mothers and fathers, surnames and more abandoned homes than I count. I deserve nothing less, cannons in the wind and they’re right again, again, pounding on the doors of a splintered landscape. I can’t let them in; I’m too short to reach the locking latch, too tired to argue insanity, too w e a k to stand on my own.

So I fall.

At first, it’s a blink of dust caught between my eyelid. A huddle of bones, dirt-caked fingernails raking the pavement that bleeds melancholy, but even tiny particles of matter come to settle in the recoiling bitumen with time. The streets are dead, too much death, but the stories still linger in the air long after the footsteps of our ghosts have receded. There’s quiet. Teasing eyes raking over my body, drinking the desperation hanging from my t-shirt. Two eyes flocked by wayward strands of hair – something out of a nightmare and you can’t pull away. From across a street, two sides of the sidewalk, two hearts beating to their own drums, and perhaps those rhythms are not so different.

In another life, she could be pretty. In another change of fate, a reversal of positions, it could be me living out of retired cloth and deserted streets. It could be her filling empty parts of a deranged soul with faces of the lost, names of the dead. Her, with a displaced home and stifling corridors to run through, with a washed face and tired eyes encrusted with nothing more than last night’s tears, because the bad comes with the good, heaven knows I don’t deserve the positives.

‘I–’

Wretched croaks from a parched throat, and we’ll try again, again – ‘I don’t think I belong here,’ – because I refuse to be weak. Because there is no other option in a merciless world.

Optimism is a fairytale Ary used to weave before she was stolen from us a final time. It was easy to let go of her, of all of them and all of their bedtime fables. Abandonment never leaves the heart of the pessimist, but that was Nieve.

We try again, again – ‘It’s hard, to feel like you belong, somewhere,’ – because we all move on, Donner, a summoning of names I won’t hide from any longer.

[cass]

k i r i t o.

Kirito was a very selfish person. After everything she'd been through, from the massacre of her entire family to having almost starved on the streets she had every right to be. She lived entirely for herself, everything she did was under the reasoning that it would benefit her in some way. Her father had labelled her a which, and then as he'd spiralled into madness, from drinking and drugs he'd turned to her sister and mother and killed them. He'd made sure she lived, he made sure she suffered for it everyday. Kiri didn't think he completely understood that her pain had faded over time, and that the raging ache in her stomach had consumed her a lot more quickly then the guilt of their deaths.

There were times when she'd cry, drawing her knees to her chest, hoping that the misery would end, because she did feel bad about that, her father killed killed them because of a false accusation, but then she was forced to remind herself that she was no witch and her father had killed them, not her. Her father was the reason why her chest ached for her mother's arms, or why sometimes she'd stare behind her, her sister's name on her lips. It hurt the most when she was in a crowded street and a phantom called her name and she tried to find that familiar face for that echoing voice His actions had caused her this agony, his actions had resulted in sleeping on the streets scavenging for food, awaiting the next meal with a twisted gut. He was the reminder every sleepless night.

He'd been a mad man with a death wish and she had suffered because of it.

Night had come and gone and as the hours had ticked by she'd ran out of food. If there was one thing she hated the most it was doing anything on an empty stomach. It was improper of her to never have food in her hands. As the sun rose she rose with it, tightening her jacket around her until the cold didn't tear into her bones. Instead, all that remained was the subtle chill nipping at her exposed skin. The best time to strike was when the crowds hustled through the streets and no one would see. But she was far too impatient to wait until that opportunity presented itself.

As of now her best bet was to creep in whilst they prepared themselves for the day. The bakeries were her best bet, where she'd find the doors open and the smells of fresh food wafting into the street. But as she makes her way into the bakers street she is not only greeted with those smells that make her stomach awaken, but a young girl that seems to be off with the fucking fairies. Their eyes meet and Kirito freezes, her stomach an echo in this silence. Fuck. This wasn't good, she had to bit down her anger. This girl had spoiled her plans, how the fuck was she supposed to get away with stealing if there was a witness right there?

"I don’t think I belong here," she said.

What? Kirito stared at her, eyes narrowed. Maybe this plan could still work, this girl seemed to be a few screws short of a proper set. If she couldn't steal the food and get away with it this girl could be a useful distraction.

"It’s hard, to feel like you belong, somewhere."

Yeah, she'd do definitely do.

Kirito smiled, taking a step closer. "Yeah, I completely understand. Belonging... here... lost souls." She mumbled, looking over towards the bakery. "Hey, lost girl, you wanna come over here, please?"

[Cait]

december donner

Dead.

Dead.

The girl is dead.

The boy is dead.

Her voice is broken glass and my ears bleed with her brittle words. Reaching out, clutching at my stilled heart, and why is it that all the words in this world come to me partially drowned, like they're being held underwater by a force too strong for them to swim away from. Break free of. Words, all signifying an inevitability of death, prolonging bad news by twisting syllables until you're forced to take a scalpel and dissect the letters past their point of eligibility.

Words, I've learnt, are poison.

Waiting by the staircase for the news of death, eight times over.

Standing on a podium with words of brothers passed clouding the air - alone, so alone, for the world to behold the broken mess you've become.

Cowering in a crowd, hiding every part of December's four-week frost away from the two words that bring an unimaginable finality.

--- and amidst it all, I long for a hold on that liberating freedom of death. Linger, a swarm of butterflies, always just out of reach, but one day I'll latch onto those glass wings.

From across the sidewalk barrier of broken dreams, the dead takes a shaking step towards me. Lost souls, she echoes. Lost souls, we're just ghosts.

On the brink of life and death.

Which one is home?

‘Hey, lost girl, you wanna come over here, please?’

Words.

And all I can hear is dead, dead, dead, dead, she's dead, too much too dead, dead dead dead, stay away from the dead, dead, dead.

It is much easier to remain a mute in the suffocating mess of collapse.

Maybe one day I'll finally believe the lies I keep telling myself.

‘Are you okay? You look -’ words, I've learnt, are poison, ‘- tired.’

That's the other thing about death - the words of the deceased never leave you. You forget names, but the lessons in their screams or whispers or laughs or sobs hold a part in your Plasticine ribcage you can't seem to shake.

It leaves me with a rotten taste in my mouth, a biter afterthought of what lies beyond the other side of this cracking sidewalk. Wonderings, of how you're meant to survive the game of l i f e when your only ally is d e a t h.

My feet move beneath my frail body - a choice, it appears, made long before any words of death are able to materialise.

Have I already lost.