left to roost | zori

[shrimp]

They called them a trio, once. But even before death they hadn't been, not for a long time.

Abdiel doesn't know why. He wonders sometimes, more so since their coffins arrived from the Capitol, and he placed a hand on top of that near-plastic wood panel (and it was with a finality, no trembling of fingers or knuckles turning white with pressure—the night before Sarina's death he had heard the rustle of the wind, restless, and had known that it was time). He remembers when he was young, and squabbling with Gabriel whose word was law just because he was older, and playing tag with his other halves, and going to birthday parties where ti@s and abuel@s and Bisabuela Marisol would shower them in kisses and shout. "¡Los trillizos!", or "¡mis mosqueteros!", or utter a roll-call while patting their heads: "Alfonso y Sarina y el pequeñito..."

Kelvin, however, does.

This morning he didn't sleep, but ironed his shirt for forty-five minutes, and made a scrambled egg but blinked to find himself stirring dried-out lace, and poured gruel into a teacup and called it "coffee" not café, and left two covered mugs for his not sleeping parents, and let Seb have another hour's rest while he laced up his boots and walked out the door. He made sure to tie them extra tightly this time, so he wouldn't trip up those wooden steps. There's always a squeaky one that causes kids trouble.

He didn't expect to be called. There were no omens circling about the house. He knew he should be. He deserved to be. He had to be. There was no other way: to leave a triplet left scrambling without his other thirds is to rid the world of everything that meant anything. But it didn't happen: he stood in that line, waiting for Abdiel Izar to be called out with malice, and all he could think of was that he did not want to be cremated, and that he did not want to be embalmed, and that he only wanted the soil to take him back to where he belonged. Instead, the crowd dispersed as another took his place. He stood there for a long time, long enough for Seb to find him, to nudge him back to his grieving parents. They waited in line with the other Izars, unsure whether their presence at Cyro's last moments in 11 would be welcomed. And after, they had a light lunch, and Kelvin went to work.

It is only when he is forging Imelda's signature on a fifth death certificate that it hits him, and Abdiel stops. He puts his head in his hands, slumps his full weight on his elbows, and wills tears to come. Eventually, they do, silently pooling in his palms as his shoulders shake like fronds of wheat in a zephyr's dance.

He is so tired. He is tired from what curls up in his stomach every time he thinks of them standing on the platform—and he hadn't even tried to object, had let them walk off of that stage without a single whisper. He is tired from his parents' expression that he will never unsee, when their second and third children were no longer in this world. He is tired from keeping his emotions in check, to prevent a collapse that has been long overdue. He is tired from his body telling him that he is doing too much and his mind screaming that he is doing too little. And he is tired of Time, flowing like a river, dragging him along the current as he forever looks back at an ever shrinking shore.

The door opens. A bell rings. Someone is here.

"Ah—" He says, a wet noise from the back of his throat, as he jerks back upright with a loud sniff and wipes a pond from his face, blinking as if he has never seen the sun. "Um, welcome to—"

His vision clears, and his first words are harsher than he means. "¿Por que está—?" and he cannot finish his sentence, for ¿Por que está aqui? is not No tiene ninguna razón para estar aquí, is not Vaya a cualquier otro lugar, is not No quiero que me vea así, is not Salga, is not why does it have to be you?, is not why does it have to be me?

"It is good to see you, Uncle. What... What brings you here today?"

He takes a breath. When he exhales it is ice, freezing him back into place.

[marguerite harvard d2a (zori)]

Vasco Izar

I’ve been getting up before sunrise for the better part of the month.

Don’t be fooled into thinking that I’m a morning person. I greet the dawn on the tired old porch swing, yes, swinging back and forth with the creek of the chains. But I’ve been out here since three in the morning watching the sky. I listen to the sounds of crickets chirping, or a loon drifting down river that calls out through the darkness. Nothing moves so much as leaves me in stillness, soft enough to send me to sleep.

Dreams don’t soothe me. I wished they came in warm pastels and took me to some faraway place. Lately it’s just crashes of blue and gray that fade to the same set of dreams that fill the time between waking. Mostly I’ll be out at sea where waves will swallow me up until my head slips all the way under. I don’t choke on the water entering my lungs but embrace the vastness of the horizon. I can open my eyes underneath the surface and stare at the emptiness of it all. Only a set of bubbles flowing upward from the kick of my feet or the air escaping my lungs breaks the silence.

I’ve never asked Katelyn what she’s thought about facing death. That sort of question leads to worry, and I don’t want to place that sort of burden on her shoulders.

When I was sick, I didn’t long to keep living. Does it make me a weaker man, to have wanted peace instead?

I wonder if it makes me a weaker man now.

Peace has been on my lips since waking through the fever; I’ve searched under rocks and across the district for it. Begged that love would lead us toward it, only to discover that there were some spaces where love would never live. That some were so wounded peace was an idle dream.

When I asked Pierre for an alliance, I knew full well that there could be no peace before justice. I may put my faith in love, but I’m old enough to know that the road toward freedom is paved in loss and our sacrifice.

As I sit on the porch swing and the daybreak comes, I pray that whatever we’re destined to face can spare as many as possible. Let the one that fights for peace carry all the wounds and scars – not the innocent, the ones who never asked to be a part of this. Let me be strong enough, weary as I am. Peace, wherever she was hiding, would be found in my lifetime. For my daughter, my wife, the wearied like Birdie Hope, the lost men like Elias, all those that had looked out at the same sunrise and can’t imagine a better tomorrow.

I spent the walk to the mortuary second guessing myself. Winding along the gravel road, there’s enough time to question whether or not it’s my conviction that guides me, or the years of the capitol’s abuse that has me fighting for freedom. Would it be less honorable to want a better life because of what they’d taken from us? Seems a pity, history letting us live long enough to see one of us made mayor, only to put us through all of this.

Did I have a better life when all I knew was the scent of wet dirt under a hot sun? When I tucked my daughter into her crib back then our fridge was empty and my trim waist was less from being ten years younger and more how empty our stomachs had been.

But then, coming on the sight of the place we’d been so many times before, I couldn’t help but think of Raquel. As happy as we could have been, no one spoke for us back then. Justice was a dream and hope was a four letter word. Survival was all we had, and even then, it didn’t stop Salome, Raquel, and Gabe from winding up here, tucked away on a casket mattress and dreaming on a pillow.

I think I’d rather be cremated and buried in the earth of eleven.

When the bell rings and I step inside a too familiar space, a voice carries on, Um, welcome to, his face a flash of surprise, '¿Por qué está—?' punctuating his confusion before retreating.

In the yellow flicker of the overhead light, I search his face, and press across the carpet with my hands in my pockets. His eyes glisten, and there’s the faintest hint of red around the space near the bridge of his nose. I stand for a moment looking at him, his sadness, and can’t find a way forward. Ask if he’s all right? (I’ve raised three teenagers already – he’d surely lie). Tell him I’ve been thinking of him? (Did he want his nosy uncle prodding, as much as the rest of the rest of his family surely was?)

'It is good to see you, Uncle. What... What brings you here today?' Abdiel shifts, and in his exhale I find myself frozen, too.

“You know, it’s strange, getting déjà vu in a place like this.” I take my hands from my pockets and place them on my hips. “I think when Benat passed Bakar and Clara spent a whole afternoon fighting over what color they’d put in his casket. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him get up in arms about how anything looked my whole life.”

“Raquel’s was yellow.” I chew at my lips, caught up in another clouded memory. “Hmmm.”

But the past isn’t why I’ve come here.

“Abdiel, I’ve been traveling across the districts, and – now and again, I’ve heard from some… folks that there are easier ways to get one’s message out to people. Whole networks where they know things as they happen, or sometimes… before.” I cross my arms across my chest. “Strange stories, right? People like to tell me them, now and then, since they think I might be able to… you know, figure out if they’re true.”

I gave a shrug. “Maybe I should get more sleep, thinking something like that might be true, eh?”