you wanted a war :: canterbury series

[pogue]

Every breath is calculated, forced from heaving lungs and abandoned into the salt of the air. I feel every heartbeat, every vibration that ripples through my chest, every drop of blood that rushes to my head. I am lifeless, hanging down from the metal pipes that dot our ceiling. I'm dying and he's screaming, grasping at the bed as he reaches for my hand. Muscles stretch and constrict, pulling themselves apart like taffy.

He reaches, I reach back. I feel his fingertips brush mine.

Stop. I can explain myself.

Twenty four hours prior and I swear I can feel his heartbeat ricocheting through his chest, dancing along with the crash of the waves, as soft and full of life as the morning sun. My hands tighten, delicately pulling him up onto my back, adjusting his weight without waking him. It's been like this since he was a kid, since we were both kids.

I have met people who view Fate as a fair maiden. This is a lie. She is a thief.

She came in the dead light of night, beneath the shattered moon and the lull of the crashing waves. Silent, deadly, an assassin unlike any I'd ever seen before. Her fingertips were satin but her heart arsenic, gliding over the creaky floorboards, muttering indecencies beneath her breath. No one even heard her coming.

At daybreak, Fate wandered off with his legs. He awoke screaming that they were gone.

I had always admired the fall of the waves and the broken buildings and the setting sun since I was a child, burying my body in the wind swept grasses of Four, complementing the sunset with my thoughts.

He stirs, head shifting slightly on my shoulder, arms tightening around my neck. Even when he sleeps, I have never seen so much life in the bones of another person. It's like an aura, coursing through his bloodstream, pouring out of his mouth with every word he speaks, with every breath he takes. Even without his legs, he is worth more than any setting sun, every crashing wave, every falling building.

He is my everything. I swear our hearts beat together.

"Kell, we're here."

"I know."

The shadows dance beneath the setting sun, hopping and jumping across the floorboards of the shipwreck in front of us, cowering in corners and hissing at the shreds of sunlight that remain. If they are dancing then the song of the waves is their symphony, crashing ocean screaming and clawing at the deck, leaving their desires as water stains.

The sky is on fire but the earth cools beneath our bodies, salt of the air embracing our skin, sands clinging to our bare feet. I can count every second it takes for the sunlight to embrace Kellan, and to watch our world turn from day to night and my brother turn to prince, wearing a crown of thorns. The waves stop singing for the shadows and instead turn their attention to my little brother, singing praises of his royalty.

It comes with elegance and unintended innocence, his voice.

"Kent?"

"Yeah, Kell?"

"Thank you."

He has done this for years, showing gratitude when it should be me who grovels at his feet, uttering a thank you that I do not deserve. I say nothing, an he expects nothing. I know he has nothing to thank me for.

Deep down, I think he knows it, too.

"No, Kell. Thank you."

He is thrown off guard, surprise spreading across his face with the flickers of the sun beneath the clouds. I can feel his eyes on me, trying to find what I could possibly be up to, dissecting me, analyzing every square inch of the beating heart in front of him.

The sun drips beneath the sky and he loses my features to the dark. The shadows overflow from the floorboards and rise to meet us.

This is how our departure went:

"Ready to go?"

"Yes."

Ten steps away from the waves and his voice speaks into my ear.

"Kent, did the ocean look funny to you tonight?"

Several seconds lost in my own thoughts. I can only answer with uncertainty.

"Not sure, Kell. I wasn't really watching it all that much."

[ table credit: rave ]

[pogue]

Every pore of my skin is drowning, water droplets running down my cheeks as I hang from metal, watching the ocean twist and tumble beneath me, laughing amidst the void. It cackles, reaching up from the shallows and tearing down the side of our house, suffocating the life from our home.

He's screaming, drowned out by the agonized groans of the whirlpool surrounding him. I'm reaching for him, desperately trying to close the gap between the two of us. He reaches too, pulling himself towards me with every ounce of strength he has left. We're playing God, the way we reach for life even in the darkness of Death.

At the last second, I slip, pulling my hand back to steady myself. This is the end.

Stop. I can explain myself.

Betrayal is beautiful, in an ironic way.

When I was six years old I watched with sleepless eyes and intense curiosity out my bedroom window, listening to the screams of the clouds above me, watching the lightning sprint across the sky, chased by the screams of the thunder. It was innocence, believing catastrophe came from the acts of nature.

It was innocence, it was correct. It was a lot of things, I guess.

It took every act of bravery to remove my hands from over my ears, to stop wincing at every whisper of the sea and the storm, to not cower when the skies turned to ash and smoke and screamed at me from graves written in the wind currents.

At seven years old I ran from bedroom to beach, racing the howling winds of a rolling storm, burying my feet in the sand in anticipation. When the storm finally came I tried to feel every rain drop on my skin, trace the paths they made in the grim that clung to my body, shuddering at the joy of standing amidst the most powerful force in the universe.

I saw no harm in the way the ocean levels rose and the way the waves crashed against the shoreline.

It was not innocence, it was ignorance.

It's barely sunset when he grapples my back, wrapping his arms around my throat, groggily whispering the kingdoms he saw in his dreams last night. Legs made of false reality, a crown of thorns, his head rests on my shoulder. Every breath I take is slow, every barefoot step against sand dunes calculated till the final moment. 

I don't want him to wake up. I fear that reality is too harsh for the kingdoms he rules in his dreams. 

I closed my eyes beneath the tissue paper covers and saw the flicker of a dying candle, the final moments of a defenseless kingdom as it falls into oblivion. I saw wilting roses and rotting flesh, bare bones floating their way up to the surface. I felt my lungs squeeze and pop, I saw the death of everyone I knew. 

I saw life end in my dreams last night. When I woke up, I had to make sure Kellan was still there with me.

"Kell, we're here-" 

I round the final bend towards where the land opens up to shipwreck. Kellan stirs on my back, lifting his head from my shoulder.

Breathless, I halt.

Betrayal is beautiful until it becomes a reality.

The shipwreck is gone, drowned in the indecencies it wrapped itself in. When I close my eyes, I like to imagine the planks and boards and masts and memories stolen in the dead of night, Fate riding on top of the waves, drowning the wreckage, pushing it deep into the void until every ounce of power it had left was gone. 

I can hear him break through the howls of the wind. Above us, a storm rolls in, the skies screaming for us to leave. 

I long to view the skies and the rain and the crashing waves of the oceans as innocent again, to not plug my ears or cower under my covers. 

But it's not innocent, it never has been.

"Kent, I want to go home." 

Everything he's ever loved has fallen. I'm the only pillar left to support him. His tears soak through the shoulder of my shirt on the way home.

Hours later and the moon crawls its way up the midnight sky, grasping at the shattered shards of the stars around it, moonlight spilled against the floorboards of our room. 

"Kent?" 

It's the first thing he's said since we got home. Maybe he didn't expect me to answer. Of course, i'm awake.

"Yeah, Kell?" 

"We we're never going to sail on that ship, were we?" 

My hand tightens on the covers and my teeth grind, eyes faltering before focusing on the moonlight that scatters across my bedsheets. Maybe if I try hard enough, I can drown myself in it. 

Was I wrong this whole time? 

Did he actually believe?

"I'm sorry, Kell." 

He doesn't answer.

[pogue]

We, as humans, can do three things during our lives. 

One, we can change. Time tattoos our skin, ebbing needles into the pores of our flesh, stretching and snapping, crinkling and flattening. With the flow of the tides we disintegrate and rot, rubber flesh becomes tissue paper skin and our bones, once strong pillars, become tooth picks, hollowed out, snapping under pressure. Our eyes go from lakes to oceans to dried up sand spots, cracking at the edges, too dry to weep for the ones we lose. Piece by piece, we watch the world around us fall into the void. Piece by piece, we join it. 

Two, we can take. It starts as the innocence of youth, with pillar bones and watery eyes, cracking our knuckles as we consume everything around us. We are born to grasp what we cannot have, to inhale and absorb it, to become one with what we do not deserve. It is punished by slaps on the wrist, white crested knuckles clenching and unclenching, releasing what we take, only to steal it again later. With old age comes the devouring of anything to make us young again, leeching off of the children we create, draining the life out of everything around us. 

Three, we can leave. There are two forms that leaving comes in. The first is abandonment, cloaked deep in the shadows of the night, dying flame irises watch as we turn our backs on the ones who love us most, sucking the final bits of life as we walk into the shadows, drowning ourselves in the dying candlelight. The second form of this is death itself, wrapped in whitewashed silk, our hair in shambles, tooth pick bones and tissue paper skin laid to rest, paid for with the final coins of the desert pockets of the ones we raised, our final act of greed, taking what our children do not have, making it our own. Of all three, this is the rawest form of life itself. 

And on some nights, when I walk amongst the sands of the beach, I fear that somewhere deep down the ocean is truly alive.

I stand in the shallow waters of a washed away shipwreck, tracing the lines in the sands beneath my feet, feeling the water splash against my bare legs, rising and jumping and twisting before collapsing onto the rocks, shattered glass water droplets littering the sands around me. There was a time when I looked towards the falling sun with unwavering excitement, stretching my thinning limbs towards the sky, imagining that if I could just capture a small piece, a broken fragment of that falling body, thread it between my fingers, wrap my body in its warmth, I'd imagine that if I could grab a piece of the sun then I would be happy forever. 

How ironic it is that I cannot find the courage to raise my head to watch the sun fall above me. 

It's been a day and a half since Kellan asked me if we were ever going to sail away in that ship, thirty six hours since I answered with disappointment, two thousand one-hundred and sixty minutes since he last spoke to me. I count them like I used to count the seconds it took for the sun to collapse into the horizon, and just like I used to long to grasp a piece of the sun I now long to hear his voice again, to watch him build kingdoms with each syllable, for that power and grace to leak from the wounds we share. I can grovel, I can beg-

He will not speak. I asked him to come with me here, today.

The clouds come in pairs of three, swirled into the night sky, dispersing and dancing across the night sky, smothering the stars that lay above them. Wordlessly, effortlessly, I sit on the rocks, rolling pebbles in between my finger tips, examining every angle and curve and bump and crack before they are lost to the darkness. It is only when the ocean screams at me that I feed the pebble to its gaping maw, watching it flee in fear, bouncing across the surface before finally being swallowed, dragged down deep into the depths. 

It is when the moonlight finally breaks out from the clouds that bind it, ripping in two and scattering its remains across the oceanfront that I see it.

This is change. 

It roars and screams, gathering far off in the distance, I swear I see it walk towards me, falling with every step, rise again, fall again. I feel its heartbeat thump with every crash that echoes against the rocks, feel the pulse of its life against my feet, grasping against my ankles, trying to drain me of my own life. 

It is greed in the form of drowning to the depths. Perhaps, in essence, the ocean is human after all. 

When I arrive home, Kellan is asleep, drowned beneath his own covers. He used to wait up for me. 

---

The air feels heavy the morning of the fall. 

It clings to my skin as I crack my knuckles, stretching amidst the morning sunlight, peeling blanket from skin, lie from soul, feeling the ocean breeze run through my body. It takes every ounce of pride I have to cast my glance towards Kellan, taking in every angle and curve and bump and crack in the kingdom he's worked so hard to build, the kingdom I so easily tore down.

Days prior he asked me if the ocean looked funny, and stepping off the splintered wooden steps of our porch I can answer that question with certainty. It has receded, scraping watery fingernails into the sands it leaves discarded, shrinking away from the District it has so long worked to swallow. 

My breaths are heavy with the morning sun, watching the  waves drag themselves away from the shoreline. One breath, two breath.

Perhaps, when it finally comes back, it will bring the shipwreck with it. 

Perhaps that will restore the kingdom I have broken. 

I leave my desires on the front steps and make my way to the district square, listening to every scuffled footstep next to the canals I walk alongside. My reflection is blurred, distorted, scattering and regathering, fleeing and failing, rising and falling. It changes with every scattered pebble and broken breeze.

It reminds me of what the ocean looked like last night, mixed with the shreds of the moonlight. Again, I remind myself that humans and the depths of the ocean are not that different. 

"One bag of apples, Alexander." 

This is the last thing I say before the sirens start and the mill of the district square silences. My fingers tighten into a fist and my eyes dart into the crowd, sirens blaring into my ears, panic setting in. It is quiet, for a moment, like the hushed whispers of the ocean at sunset. And then, all at once it comes. 

"It's the ocean! Something big is coming!" 

I take off into the sea of people running towards me, bumping shoulder to shoulder stress to stress trying to make my way towards the only kingdom I have ever known true. They won't let me, the citizens scream in my ears as I push through them, yelling for them to move. They yell their own indecencies back at me, standing directly in my path. 

I break free just shy of the beach.

It is then that I see it, gathering and gathering and rising and rising and-

It takes my breath away, like a thief in the night, fangs bared, fingers taking whatever it can, draining life from its victims. 

Everything is heavy, the air the sand the ocean the breezes, everything is sinking into the next, stirring and dancing across my vision like clouds in the night sky. I glance to the ocean, watching the wave come closer closer closer. 

They said get to high ground. 

I wish I had wings. 

We have no time when I burst through the door, my mother collapsing into my arms, kissing me on the cheek before my father pushes me upstairs, panic in his voice, the fire in his eyes is dying fast. 

"Get upstairs." 

Our high ground is made up of twelve splintered wooden steps, each one less reliable than the last. Our safe haven is composed of rusty bed springs and bare bone ceilings, pipes exposed. We cower in a room fit for a king, listening for the sound of the wave hitting.

One minute.

Two minutes.

Three minutes, Kellan shivers in my arms.

"Kent, I'm scared." 

"I know. Me too-" 

It hits and everything goes grey. No. That is the darkness taking over, lightbulbs shattering house swaying and groaning  with the bursts of wind that are tearing it apart. I feel the house crash beneath us, breaking with every pulsed heartbeat of the ocean, every cracked knuckles emerging from the depths of the void, snapping the shutters and the structure and the frame into pieces. 

My mother shrieks as the floor next to her gives way, falling into the ocean beneath. 

"Kent! Get to the corner!-" 

It's the last time I feel my father's hands on me, he pushes me towards the corner. 

And then the floorboards snap.

He falls. And my mother.

She falls, too. 

"MOM! DAD!" 

Kellan shatters in my arms, trying to pry his way towards the open floor. I pull him close, watching the floor give way with the rushing water. Glance up and there are exposed pipes and rafters tracing the ceiling, rusted over with the salt water air. 

I do not think, I act, dragging the both of us over and on top of the bed, yelling over the screams of the wind for Kellan to hold onto the bed with all of his might, with all of his strneght.

"DON'T LET GO, WHATEVER YOU DO." 

He nods. I can't tell if it's tears that dot his face or water splatters. After a split second I realize it's both. I look up, I jump and grasp the rafters.

Every breath is calculated, forced from heaving lungs and abandoned into the salt of the air. I feel every heartbeat, every vibration that ripples through my chest, every drop of blood that rushes to my head. I am lifeless, hanging down from the metal pipes that dot our ceiling. I'm dying and he's screaming, grasping at the bed as he reaches for my hand. Muscles stretch and constrict, pulling themselves apart like taffy.

He reaches, I reach back. I feel his fingertips brush mine. I pull his hands into mine and pull with all my might until he joins me in the rafters, watching the bed fall to the rapids just as he enters my arms. 

I kiss him once, twice, whisper into his ear that we're going to be alright now. 

No, that is not how it happened. 

Every pore of my skin is drowning, water droplets running down my cheeks as I hang from metal, watching the ocean twist and tumble beneath me, laughing amidst the void. It cackles, reaching up from the shallows and tearing down the side of our house, suffocating the life from our home.

He's screaming, drowned out by the agonized groans of the whirlpool surrounding him. I'm reaching for him, desperately trying to close the gap between the two of us. He reaches too, pulling himself towards me with every ounce of strength he has left. We're playing God, the way we reach for life even in the darkness of Death.

At the last second, I slip, pulling my hand back to steady myself. This is the end. I watch his body fall fall fall fall to the ocean.

No, that is not how it happened, either. 

I wrap my fingers around the cold metal of the pipes that run course through our exposed ceiling, focusing all of my attention towards my brother below me, extending my hand down for him to grab, to save him, to pull him into my arms.

The side of the house groans and screams and just as he is about to grasp my hand it shatters and crumbles, falling into the ocean beneath it. Kellan draws his hand back to cover his head from falling debris, peering up at me again. 

"GRAB MY HAND!" 

He reaches again, I strain every bit of my muscles towards him.

But.

I do not feel his hands lace themselves into mine.

Nor do I feel myself slip and steady. 

I see it, in his eyes. The way they crumble. The way they give up, the way they give in. 

"KELL! NO" 

The ground gives way and his eyes falter and in the blink of an eye and the crash of a wave he is gone.

That is how it happened. 

The rest of the house crumbles before I can dive in and join him. I remember tightening my grip before  everything goes black. 

---

I'm buried beneath a broken kingdom when they find me, bloodshot eyes staring up into the sun.

"Holy shit."

"He's alive." 

I am alive, this is true. 

Humans can do three things. Change, take, and leave. The ocean, it seems, can do these same things, can do them better than we can.

I ask them to find Kellan. They say they don't know who I'm speaking about.

I hear the heartbeat of the ocean in the back of my brain before I slip into the darkness again.