CW: suicidal thoughts and self-loathing
Chapter 10: Mind and Body
Staying houses are for staying. Everyone knows that. Viola wasn't sure how many of those were in Arcadia. A hundred? A thousand? Two million? Reckon it had to be a lot. There were a bunch of empty houses. People up and disappeared or up and left all the time. You had to do something with that space.
Homes are for homing. Less people know that. It had been ages since Viola had a home, since she left her folks. The staying house was plenty enough home. And what she had with her folks couldn't rightly be called that, now could it? If she got sappy, Viola might say her friends were home. And if she got honest, she might say watching one half of that home vanish into the woods made her feel empty inside. If she got honest.
De'afi went and got lanterns from the house, cursing to Paradise and back again. Curse All Creation, curse the soil, curse the gods, curse the forest spirits, curse the dark and the light and the roof and the floor and even the little blades of stick grass. Curse hir dumb ass for coming out.
"What in the damn fuck hell?" ze shouted.
Viola like her chest was gonna cave, like great big insects were hatching inside her lungs. Spiders tried to claw up her throat and it was taking everything in her to beat them back down. But they waited. Nested. Gods alive. She shouldn't have to go through this again. Wasn't Sybil enough? Why couldn't Sybil Basalt-Eislane ever be enough? Was she fated--destined--to lose more and more and more, to have the marrow sucked off her bones? She wasn't even awake when Sybil died. She was fast asleep in her staying house like a good kid. She found out next morning from the old folks and their gossip. She didn't have to go in those damn fuck woods and look for her damn fuck best friend.
"You think they're okay?" the aviator queried.
"I don't know, I don't know," Viola despaired.
The tears finally broke free, coming quick from behind her eyes. They slept in the bow of her big beautiful heart-shaped lips.
The woods stitched itself together under their light. The pine trees towered above, reminding Viola of those wooden toy soldiers Sybil collected. He got bored one afternoon and shut them in a drawer. Sybil was like that with people too--he would have gotten bored with Viola and De'afi and Abakris and even Sadie Crane. She knew that now. Took her years to realize. Spent damn near half her childhood trying to mean something to a boy who didn't even like her.
"You good?" the aviator queried.
"No yes maybe," Viola trembled back. "Let's get to it."
She stomped her feet. The feet stomps were a little gearing up motion Sadie Crane taught her in Scouts. She hated those long hikes, but she'd learned not to cry easy. Her folks never gave her that grace. They told her Scouts built character. All Viola built was another chapter in the anxiety erotica that was her life.
They ran on through the woods. The aviator pivoted hir lantern in all directions.
The journalist gripped bows into her arm. Hard enough to feel taut ropes of muscle through her cloak and the shirt she had on under. She gripped the lantern tighter with the other and tried not to think about what is lurking in the dark. When--not if, but when--something came from her, she wasn't getting away. Not this time.
Ze chased coal-dark streaks with hir eyes and the light. 'Till they disappeared from sight and ze could swear to anything something had been there. Something real big bad.
They stopped, Viola first and De'afi last. The light bounced forward to illuminate the empty path. Damn. Neither hide nor hair of that Sadie Crane. Ze wanted to shout, but made hirself keep real quiet. You didn't yell this deep in the woods. You never knew what was gonna call back.
Viola's name was spoken, a whisper curled around the skeleton of a naked pine tree.
"Viola."
She took another step and the nothing in front of her widened. The light wasn't strong enough to pierce whatever this was. Only a light and a damn useless one at that. She was only blood and bones. Above, the sky. Around her, the ledge she'd been walking all her life. Pitch dark ocean, just beneath the leviathans. The drop was a maw of twice-toned agony. Made of all the people she could have saved if she'd been a little smarter, if she'd been a little kinder. The impact would be a pleasant end, more than she could ever deserve for the pain she'd caused from the day she was born. She should have become a faci officer like her sisters. She should have made her folks proud.
"Viola!"
Her name again, but yelled. She made quick in the opposite direction and ran from the leviathans, from the pitch nothing that belonged only to terrors. It was bad times over there. Best keep to herself.
Her lips twisted in amusement. Damn. Got her sounding like a poet. Real nice influence, Sadie Crane.
"Hey, babe, you golden?" De'afi yelled.
"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine," Viola half-lied. "And I ain't deaf either. Stop shoutin', will ya? Geez."
The snap of branches like stale bread and bones between teeth. Ze spun hir head. That had to be something. No damn chance it was hir head.
They made for the sound, the aviator swinging hir lantern up and forward. Ze couldn't let them be gone. Ze couldn't let All Creation steal another of hirs. Ze'd beat the whole world bloody before that happened.
Viola was behind, but saw it first. Rats. There was a way into the caves over there. And it looked like it'd been compromised, to say the least. Boards strewn every which-way-all-over. This wasn't a place to be. You'd get lost in there. You'd die. Swear on anything.
"No way," the journalist sighed.
"You're surprised?" said the aviator skeptically.
"Nah, just super disappointed," the journalist said back. "Another damn thing after damn thing."
Viola came forward real slowlike. It was cave all the way through. Far as she could see anyhow. The ground was flat and stone-spotted, the walls indented deep. A notice had been stuck up. Imminent Danger written in Arik, Divine, and Script. The boards over the entrance had been smashed to bits. Someone got real busy with their boot.
Viola squinted her eyes tightly. She loved cave exploration, loved it sure as anything. But she wasn't in the mood for it tonight. She wasn't in the mood for traipsing through the forest after her stupid best friend and walking into a dark cave after.
They could return to the homestead and bunk there all night. Get comfy and wait for Sadie Crane to come back. Or they could keep looking for their maybe dead friend. Viola was wrong in thinking she'd seen the ledge. This was the ledge, this was where she made a damn fool decision that got her eaten.
"We ain't got much to lose," the aviator said.
Their lives. They had their lives to lose.
End of Chapter 10
Miles past the invisible line where Crow's Nest stops, a pair of teenagers--with use of a makeshift sling--rescue an abandoned nest of bird eggs from a high up window sill. On the ark of Ru Divine, a couple of student protesters smoke cigarettes outside their university. In the capital walled city-state of Eudora, a young boy lifts his baby sibling up to see through the barred window of his bedroom. On the balcony of an enormous yellow housing complex in Picaresque, a parent speaks rapidly as they rip damp blankets from the strung up drying line. There is a life out there to have. But we always return.
--Excerpt from "We Died Today: Pre Mortem Musings" by Unknown Author