So I said I'd be taking a break, but this literally would not leave me alone. Sorry.
She watched a snowflake—its crystalline edges ruffled and sparkling like new ice—fall onto his eyelashes, which were longer than hers—how unfair—and curled delicately upwards. By all means his face was forgettable, lovely in its own way, perhaps, but you couldn't pick it out from a crowd, could only mark it out with a yeah, I think I saw him but I couldn't really be sure.
His flat rested in the damp earth between them, her knees curled up and locked behind her arms. It was heaped to the fullest with ripe strawberries, their summer-fog scent whispering through the morning air. Each bead of dew on the curling vines stood out under the sun; tiny rainbows sparkled inside of them.
"It's lucky Chiron lets at least a little bit of snow fall out, yeah?"
"Yeah."
Lazy winter ceased the conversation but she wished there was something she could say or do to prolong the words, because she ate up every interaction, every passing glance; she snatched up these instances with her glove-covered fingers and stuffed them into the pockets of her frayed jeans.
"At least we get strawberries all the time."
As if to emphasise her sentence, she picked one of the offending fruits up, her fingertips scaling the ridges before she tore the leafy tops away. Her finger pressed too hard and the sweet juice spurted outwards, catching him in the eye. She cringed.
He wiped the trail off, his shoulders heaving with laughter at her failure.
"Shut up!" She laughed, wiping off the pinkish smudge with her thumb—some of it has gotten onto her shoulder.
"So delightful."
Then they heard a voice, drunken and wry, shouting for him from down the hill.
"Dad." He said, shrugging apologetically.
Don't go, don't go, don't go.
"You better go, then."
Of course she doesn't keep him; no one wants to get someone they like into trouble. Kids are like that.
You better go, then. You better go.
It was summer then—hot sun streaming through the gaps of the leaves—and she was twelve with a gap between her teeth. Pines stretched all around her, their needles interlocking and pushing against each other, a borough so thick that leaking light was only a memory, a whisper. Katie Gardner, that was the name of the girl who was supposed to be showing her about, but the older girl was too busy playing her endless, self-imposed game of Mother Hen.
"I'll take you out later," she said anxiously, "But now—oi, Travis! Stop bothering my brother, you idiot!"
She could have waited patiently, but apart from the ADHD, something else was drawing her out to the gnarled trucks and peeping darkness. She hopped from one foot to the other and waited half a minute more before dashing off into the green. No one paid her half a mind, they were all too busy. Shouts were peppering the air, good-natured arguments carried on, shrieks of laughter rose up from the lake.
It was so lonely.
Her mum was only a notion, nothing more than a nudge at the back of her mind. Her father was the one she achingly missed; through the different schools and towns, through the changing landscapes and the bruised knees and broken teeth, he was the one that has always been there. With certainty she could say that he was her only true friend.
"That's chicory, see?" He'd say, thumbing the bitty fronds of the dawn coloured flower. "And that there's hibiscus."
She was deep into the forest now, but there was no need for worry, she could trail her way out. She was always been good at that sort of thing—even though in others she could nicely be described as positively brainless. She picked a particular pine and nestled down against it, filling her nose with the soft, cleansing scent. Her eyes started to close slowly when she heard the crackling of a twig somewhere not far off and she tensed, feeling her muscles contract, her senses prickle.
"Gods, I didn't see you there!"
"Hi?" She ventured uselessly. The boy in front of her was about her age, give or take. He was carrying a wide-necked glass bottle through which she could see berries of various shapes and sizes and colours, but they all had a frosted rinse to them.
"I've never seen you before, come about." He frowned. "Are you new?"
She tilted her head to hear the chirping of a silly bird. "Yeah, I arrived today, actually; just around... Demeter?"
"Dionysus."
"Isn't that the..." The words drunk bitter man didn't quite make their way out of her lips.
"Yeah," he lauged, "He's actually not bad, once you get to know him." The strange look on his face told her that this knowing him wasn't something he had gotten around to doing just yet.
"My name's Miranda." She offered, feeling a bubble of hope start to poke in her ribcage because at thirteen friendship was important, "Miranda Gardner."
He peeled off the bottle cap and offered her a berry. The one she picked out was the purple of a bruise and the blue of a comfortable evening and it tasted melancholy, it tasted of forests.
"What's your name, then?" She asked with grave seriousness.
He smiled happily and a narrow shaft of glittering sunlight actually broke its way through the canopy.
"Castor."
-x-
He introduced her to his twin not far later and they were distinguishable only for a minute freckle constellation that peppered only Castor's nose-bridge. Luckily for Miranda, the two lone occupants of the Dionysus cabin had an already established rapport with the Demeter kids due to the fact that they both had taken an ownership of sorts over the strawberry fields.
It was Katie who took a mind to teach the new girl the ins and outs of the picking techniques, and to make sure that no stray Hermes camper was darting about ready to nip off a bud or two. Especially the Stoll brothers, the more seasoned girl warned. Especially them.
It was Castor who showed her the best spot for strawberry picking.
"It's always the ripest bit here," he swore, wearing a weird rattan hat sort of contraption that makes him look both foolish and earnest. She could see those infamous Stoll brothers taking the mickey out of him for the hat if they ever come up to do more than nick. "And you can't just pull them out like that; you've got to do it gently, see?"
Pollux always joined those sessions and it was here Miranda noticed the temperament between the brothers. Pollux was a little more strung-up, a tad more tense, while Castor was generally more easy going. In the end of it all, though, they were both nice enough.
-x-
It was nearing the end of summer when the campers struck up a farewell barbeque; since two people couldn't have gotten a proper grill going, both Dionysus boys have partnered, as usual, with the Demeter cabin. Not far off, Miranda could hear Malcolm boring just about everyone he got into contact with with his recital of the complete contents of Grilling for the Gifted—Pollux was somewhere listening to Katie dribble on about not having the proper make of peanut sauce for the satay.
"Hey, why aren't you going back home after camp?"
He frowned, poking a slice of crab on a stick, and finally answered.
"Cause this is my home, see? I stay here."
"I know that," she persisted; tact had never been one of her strong suits, "but why?"
"No mum." He said, and took a breath before continuing, "She... well, I've never had one, I suppose. Most kids here get abandoned by their godly parent, but for me it was sort of the opposite; me and Pollux."
Miranda chewed on the inside of her cheek awkwardly. "Sorry, I shouldn't have asked."
"Hey, how else are you supposed to know?"
Someone crisping up their grill—it was an Ares kid, they could tell by Clarisse hollering and waving Maimer around—was one of the high points of the night as those who couldn't get a successful fire flocked over with their uncooked food for a good grilling by the mad fire.
This time she approached the ride to camp in high spirits, looking forward to the camaraderie, the meeting of old friends. She wore her orange shirt proudly and kissed her father goodbye before getting on the van at pick-up and before she knew it she was racing—well, Argus's driving style could more honestly be described as a crawl—up the tracks before Thalia's pine and Peleus came into view and the doors burst open with loud greetings on both sides.
After going through one school that ended in angry expulsion and a semester of home-school in the new apartment her father had bought because he was laid off his old job, seeing an old friend with a reminder of consistence was nothing short of ecstasy.
"Gone berry picking?" She asked gleefully as she settled between Pollux—who complained—and Castor, whose fingers were stained red with strawberry juice; Katie had led the cabin through an unsuccessful attempt at making strawberry tea; unsuccessful because they had added too little sweetener.
"I have." Castor confirmed, pulling out that little jar. She picked the same berry as always, the bruised evening sky blanket one.
"How was school?"
"Shit!" She said vehemently, because at fourteen she was only newly learning the joys of swearing. "So shit I nearly died!"
"That's what you get for learning." Pollux smirked.
"Hey," Castor grinned, "At least you're not going to have to learn anything new here; no ancient greek stuff, none of Chiron's mythology lessons or what, no learning this summer, no way!"
"Gods, shut up!" His brother complained, "You two never talk about anything fun."
"Plenty of fun without you here." Miranda pulled a face.
He bared his teeth like a monkey and raced off to harass Will Solace, who had brought a new guitar and was proudly showing it off to the rest of the Apollo cabin, who started to sing mock-seriously and were generally upsetting Malcolm who was trying to get people to participate in a survey.
"Ah, he's just in a bad mood." Castor explained.
"He's always in a bad mood." She complained and he laughed.
"Not so! He just acts like it, is all."
"Oh, look," she interrupted, pulling out a tea coloured packet, "I've got some special strawberry seed things that my dad swears by. Think we could try them?"
"Why not?" He smiled lazily and leaned against the wall, "We've got all of summer."
Fifteen was the age when the downhill started. Her father sent her off with a pallid face and drooping eyes and a tired smile—the economy was bad and a man with only half an education was put off first every time even though he worked twice as hard and for half the pay. The monsters that always seemed to find her weren't a bonus either; she couldn't shake off the feeling that as an attraction for the beasts, she wasn't doing her father any favours.
Pollux and Castor were the first to greet her as always, and the three of them went down to the river and talked about what she had missed, and what they'd missed in the outside world. There was something tense in the air this year: things had been getting serious since Percy Jackson's arrival the last year. Now, someone was poisoning Thalia's Pine; Chiron had been given the sack. It was all looking very tense.
At Capture the Flag, she and Castor—widely acclaimed as the most useless in combat—were put on the defence for a rather meaningless spit of land while Pollux was relegated to the offence somewhere else.
"Hey," Castor said after they made sure that no one was going to come this way anyhow, "You know those berry things that you like so much? I get them from here." He pushed past a fat, stubborn bush, upsetting several leaves that made a sussorrous, rustling sound. Curious, Miranda followed behind him to see a clump of those bruise berries sitting in the nook of a tree. They started plucking as they laughed at the jackpot and the pure luck at being placed here; some they stuffed into pockets for want of a container, and some they ate immediately, contentedly chewing and savouring the little bits.
It was the first time, in that pocket of silence and content, that Miranda realised something so childishly simple and so utterly, completely silly as to embarrass her: this boy with berries in his hand and the sun in his eyes, she liked him. And it was that simple, except at the same time, it wasn't, really.
-x-
"Oi!" was the way that Pollux seemed to greet her most of the time. It was the free evening, and most of the campers were drifting lazily about in a pre-dinner excitement. Castor was nowhere to be seen and Miranda was kneeling in a little garden belonging to the Demeter cabin—each camper had own plot and the space was alive with different bouquets and colours and smells.
Miranda herself fancied the old fashioned flowers; her plot nodded gently with merry cornflowers and bells of hollyhock, sunshine marigolds contested with gentle bleeding hearts.
"I think my brother has a problem?" Pollux asked, his voice low.
Her brow furrowed in concern. "Oh, yeah?" She narrowly avoided squashing someone's tomatoes—being a Demeter kid pretty much meant you can grow whatever you when, when and wherever, most of the time—and stood up.
"I think he's been at alcohol; like loads and loads of it."
"How come you've never noticed?" She had a bad feeling, a cold wave traced its way up her spine.
"Well, I didn't at first; to be honest we've both been drinking some, not too much, just enough. The Stolls have a little business going, we trade around. But you know those weird berry juice things Castor makes? They smelled funny lately, so I drank it and gods, did I get a might, I tell you."
"Okay, but are you sure it's a problem?" Please let it not be.
"Yeah, let me finish! So after I found out, I started poking around a bit and he's got all these bottles clattering around. He's clever about it yeah, but not smart enough!"
"But why?"
"That's why I'm talking to you, isn't it? He'll tell you, but not me." There was a measure of hurt in the last sentence, but as aforementioned, Miranda was a little lacking on the tact department, so she missed it. "Who knows?"
"I'll talk to him." Miranda promised.
-x-
"It's not entirely my fault, okay?" Castor raised his hands in mock surrender, "I mean my dad's the god of wine, for hades's sake!"
"If Pollux says you've got a problem, believe you me, you've got a problem!" She wondered how she could've missed it, but she must have caught him at a bad time: the sickly sweet smell of alcohol was overpowering, it gripped the air and strangled the sparse furniture. And it wasn't like she had actually been in their cabin before.
"Can you at least tell me why?" she begged.
He tapped on the bedpost before finally speaking. "You don't know how crazy it gets here, being alone."
"Alone?" She echoed, somewhat disbelieving.
"It's fine when summer's here, and the whole lot's around. But during other times... it's so quiet, as in not really, but... I can't explain it, I dunno... It's just lonely," he pleaded, "Especially when winter comes and the snow's blanketing everything outside but not really here... I feel like I'm—I'm dreaming half the time, like any of it isn't real. Like if I'm not real, then what's the point? Mir-Miranda," he hardly said her name and she hardly said his, they relied on poking and heys to call each other, "It's weird. I dunno."
There were noises drifting in from outside, they sounded surreal.
"I just get so scared at the end of summer, when everyone leaves."
She wanted nothing more than to hug him and promise that everything would be fine, just fine, but she couldn't bring herself to do that, not yet. She sat down next to him and tried to avoid the fact that he was trying not to cry because something was really wrong even if she couldn't understand just what. They sat in silence for a while more, letting the newly dawning evening sounds come over them.
Miranda finally broke it. "Come gardening with us."
"What?"
"I'll get Katie to let you have a plot, you can grow whatever you want. It'll keep you busy when everyone's gone, keep your mind off things. I can get her to get Pollux a plot—"
They both managed a snort because Pollux gardening just wasn't going to happen.
"But what will I grow? Isn't it a bit..." he paused, "naff?"
"It's not naff!" She snapped, frowning. "Grow whatever you want. It's better than sitting here moping or what."
"It is, isn't it?" He reasoned.
They sat in the silent dark for a bit more before they walked out for dinner; Katie caught Pollux's eye and nodded. It was naive to think that everything would be snap fine from then on, but it was a start.
The sky was white when the world ended.
It was the middle of summer and Miranda had just plucked out a couple of feverfews, wondering at the white rays that sparked and burst on the outer layers when Chiron came up to her looking grave and ill.
Katie seemed to recognise the look on his face and quickly ushered the rest of the Demeter cabin away. Castor was there as well, scooping buckets of dark earth into a rusting tin pail.
"Miranda," Chiron began mournfully and just like that her heart started twitching and buzzing darkly, like a storm, like it was falling. "Can both of us get up to the Big House?"
She exchanged a look with Castor who shrugged in confusion—this had the makings of a principal's office thing, and she had had enough of those trips to know what they meant; but this seemed a lot worse than a suspension or expulsion; a lot worse than a lay-off at her dad's workplace—she was still holding the feverfew when they reached the Big House.
"Hot chocolate?" The centaur asked and she shook her head. He took a deep sigh and hesitated before he let loose the bugger.
"We've gotten a phone call..."
And just like that, everything stopped
Her father, chicory-showing and sad eyed (once was her) only friend father, struggle into the doorway on half-pay and starved for sleep father, sing-me-to-sleep I'm scared, goodbye-daddy-I'm-going to camp father, was dead.
It was an accident—slick, rain loved roads glistening with water; there was another car going too fast, driver's reaction too slow.
She heard the news in without a word, took it in without comment. And then when Chiron paused, not knowing what to say next, she got up, stopped for a bit, completely lost, and then started to run.
She ran as fast as she could, past the trees, past the people, into the woods where the world never moved. She waited until she was shrouded in pines and shadows and she collapsed in the inglenook with the bruise berries, making a sound so terrible that it couldn't have existed. It was wail that scared the nymphs and woke up the sleeping birds, and it seemed to go on forever.
She cried without stopping, she ripped apart the petals of the feverfew and damned them to tartarus and then—
"Miranda?"
Oh gods.
"Miranda, what's wrong?"
She didn't want to put it into words because that would've made it seem real. But it was real and there never was a use in pretending.
"My father is dead."
He didn't offer a word of comfort, not a hug or a shoulder squeeze; none of that. He did better. He just sat next to her and let her use his shoulder as a tissue as all the tears are wrung out. He didn't say anything because there wasn't anything to stay. He just sat there and soaked it all up, all her grief, her heart in salty water droplets.
The white sky turned black and she was numb and hollow, her inner arms smeared with dirt. A yellow flax petal was stuck to her cheek.
"My father is dead." She whispered again, and the world did not move
-x-
Come winter, when Percy and Thalia embarked on some quest with the hunters, it was the first Christmas she spent at Camp. Katie and another boy were the only campers from Demeter; Katie was doing her best to make things happy, and it was getting better; but sometimes you just wanted to lie in your grief because it's a betrayal to do anything else.
She stalked off to the Dionysus cabin, briefly gathering the snow-dusted rooftops of the cabins, like the inside of a snowglobe that thoughtless children shake, and pushed the door open. Pollux looked deeply uncomfortable and mumbled something about getting money from Travis, hurrying outside.
Castor was making a drawing and he looked up, perplexed.
"I need a drink." Miranda said, and he frowned.
"Huh?"
"You've got a stash of beer or what lying around don't you? I want some?" I need some.
If it was a campfire, a bright get together, he would have just passed it to her without a second thought; but it would be dangerous to do it now; he knew because he knew.
"No."
"What?"
"No."
She looked as if she was fixing to cry or start laughing hysterically—and neither was a good option—so he grabbed her hand without thinking and brought her out into the Demeter garden.
"My red and golds are doing nicely," he blubbered hastily.
"Your what?"
He pointed.
"Those are called love-lies-bleeding." Miranda said slowly. "And they're doing nicely, you're right."
"You told me to plant them," he says quickly, tripping over his words, "You told me to plant them when things are going bad for me, and I think I'm going to do the same for you." He stopped to take a breath, "Because it helps, you know. Actually."
Bright flowers covered by dust powder snow are the oddest thing ever.
"Castor," Miranda said gently, "You can't plant anything proper through this stuff." She kicked at a bit of the fine, powdery snow.
"You're a Demeter kid, I thought you can do anything you want?"
She smiles sadly at him. "Not anything."
It's only now that he realised he was holding her hand and he dropped it quickly, blushing.
"Sorry." He said uselessly. A pause. "At least I think the strawberries are still going along fine."
Don't go, don't go, don't go.
It's snowing again and he's gone.
It's snowing.
"Gods," Katie gushed in relief as Will Solace—his own face screwed up with grief at the loss of Lee Fletcher—pronounced one of her campers as fine and handed him a square of ambrosia. "Thank you."
Miranda wasn't that hurt herself, just a few scrapes along her arm that a bandage would fix nicely. She was so tired at first, unable to think straight under a muggy canopy. It was only then that the urgency returned to her in a quick stab, and she got up to find her way amongst the confused, grieving throng.
With a burst of relief she spotted the blond head bobbing about, but it looked lost, confused.
"Pollux?" She shouted as she hurried to him, "Pollux, where's—" The boy turned his empty eyes towards her and rushed off. The moment she saw those hollow eyes, her ribs contracted. The bodies were lying in a straight line off to her left but she couldn't make herself look.
She heard desperate weeping and the sound of Clarisse forcefully jamming her sword repeatedly at a tree stump: two sounds so different, but both trying to grasp at the edges of the same thing.
The first time the world ended, the sky was white.
She stood there, shaking, before she finally found whatever spare bits of courage she could muster to turn around.
There were two Dionysus boys, so the shroud could only belong to him.
This time, her grief was quiet. His body was half encased underneath its diaphanous shroud, lying peacefully at the end of the line. She could believe it, of course, but she didn't want to.
She knelt slowly next to him, not knowing that tears were already coursing down her dusty cheeks. Before she realised what was happening, her was on his chest, her shoulders heaving slowly. She accepted it because death lived all around her; one more fallen is no far stretch. Even when that one more scratch in the sky was the weight of the earth beneath her feet.
And so the world ended again.
When she rose, she looked into his face, her fingers gently brushing against the spray of freckles that his twin—oh gods, his twin, how is he going to bear this—didn't have.
"I'll only eat bruise berries on the first day of camp," she promised softly, "It's called love-lies-bleeding. You plant flowers when you're upset and I can't eat strawberries anymore. Thank you for showing me where the bruise berries are. You won't wake up and I—"
She found his bruised hand, and hesitated with all the words she had left unsaid—and all the words he would never hear—she clenched that hand in her fist and lifted it to her lips—not quite kissing it because she couldn't bear that, but just holding it, the joined flesh; the dead and the living and the heart that still drummed with a song never sung; the small, tiny heart that beat still.
"Thank you, Castor," she whispered, and she was crying again, "Thank you."
For a moment I want you to imagine the scene that lies beneath: of children like blooming stalks ripped before their time, dimmed eyes with souls not yet grown, alone and small in the vast eternity of the hereafter. I think even Charon's heart—as he ferried the lost along the desolate and lonely river—dry as people make it out to be, could not have borne it.
She couldn't bear to see Pollux at first: it was too much of a mirror as it was a reminder, and somehow, even though a part of her knew that it might have helped for her to be there by him, she could not bear it herself. Finally, eight days after the battle, the first white sky day in ages, she pushed open the door to his cabin.
What she saw was someone weeping, and the other locking up his tears: the father and the son.
There was an empty bed.
She shut the door and left before they could notice.
If there was one thing she was aware of, it was that Pollux wouldn't be consumed the way his brother had been. Castor had been healing before he died: only one bottle remained underneath his bed; she brought it to the forest and smashed it against the gnarled trunk of a tree, the amber liquid trickling down the bark. She scouted out the Stoll brothers and made them swear on the styx that they wouldn't get Pollux any of their wares.
Pollux and his empty eyes were sitting on the porch when she came by with a bottle in her trembling hands.
"What the hades is that?" He asked brusquely as she held the bottle up to the light: the glass sparkled, prisms captured in the faceted crystal knob. Frosted berries in velvet colours filled the cylinder.
"I think we should do something." She said
Against his better judgement, he followed her.
It was winter; the December winds whistled faintly in their ears—someone was ringing a tinkling of bells, their tintinnabulation bubbling and wrinkling against the comfortable evening blanket.
"What are we doing?" Pollux managed and Miranda handed him another bottle she brought, filled to the brimming. They were ankles in the strawberry fields now, the small nodding rubbies covered with icy crystals but still blooming. Silently, she unstoppered her own bottle and shook it out into the wide open; like small bursts of colour, they fell upon the white-covered landscape, wringing their way here and there, creating a path that went on and was unknowable and unreachable.
Pollux bit his lip and followed.
The two of them stood there in the quiet before they stuffed their hands into their pockets, the questioning wind tugging half-heartedly on their hair, and made their way down to the cabins, away from the silence of the strawberry fields.
So far I have told this tale with nearly no comments or judgment, no voice of my own. I am an observer. I am not death—he's cannier, wittier; I think his heart is bigger; his job, after all, is to carry souls in his weathered arms.
I am life, actually. I am the story they never told: the bitty fronds of chicory, the inglenook of berries in the trees, the glance at the back of one walking away to meet his father, the one bottle he didn't pick up because of the colours red and gold, the goodbye kiss that wasn't. And I pass no judgment on the deeds of the living, bid no goodbye as I carry out the passover between the here and there.
I have seen it all. A merry pair we make, death and I. He talks enough for both of us (and no he is neither Hades nor Thanatos—they think they rule him, but he rules himself). I have seen enough to know that stories will go on or end without me.
So you see—
I don't speak, but I feel. They rip themselves apart and they build themselves together using whatever scraps line the riverbanks. I watch. I say nothing. But I know.
Sometimes death—who is kinder than he will let himself admit; kinder than what many people paint him to be—lets his friends visit me. I'm pleased to tell you that most of them are well, after the initial shock. He brought the boy up once, and he asked me a simple question: three words to carry the weight of his world.
"Are they okay?"
Are they? I showed him, because generally I don't like to speak (I am a watcher); this monologue itself is already making my throat dry. He saw the berries that lined the earth, wedged in the dark of the soil. He picked one up (and I think we all know which one it was) and held it reverently.
He was crying.
They were not fine, of course; not yet. Not for a long time, no.
But like I've said—I've seen it all, and this I know:
They will be.