Messages
by Charis
Disclaimer: Battlestar Galactica and all associated characters belong to people who are not me. I'm just borrowing.
Notes: Someone spiked my water with crack. I have no other excuse. Bonus points if you get the mythological reference.
And oh the ravens
With souls like candlelight
The messengers of doom
They sit and they call my name each night
- Meg Davis, "The Ravens"
She dreams of washing clothes in a river. When she looks down, she is holding a suit jacket she somehow knows is Adar's, the dark navy brocaded with rust-hued stains. The water is icy cold, the chill seeping through her skin and settling into her bones. She knows too, with that same vague-sourced certainty, that this means the President is dead, but somewhere inside her, she already knew this was true.
The blood finally washes clean, and she lifts her hands from the water to reach for the next garment. This time it's a dress, floral and summery, nothing she recognises. And then a baby blanket. A scarf. A ragged wool sweater.
It matters, somehow, that she keep going, even as the cold deepens, spreading from her bones until her heart is frozen. Perhaps what matters is that she stop feeling; perhaps this is just the catalyst for that desensitising, or perhaps she needs the clothes for something else. Their owners will want them.
Their owners. Her ghosts.
Into the water again, scrubbing, trying to rinse out what may never be clean again. She continues even as she loses count, tens or hundreds of garments flowing between her hands in the water, as the sensations become more and more muted. She scarcely feels the rasp of fabric against numb hands, though she notices abstractly that they are red and chapped when she reaches for another piece. There are trees around her, close to the river-banks, oak and willow and tall redwood, trees which would never grow in such close proximity. She spreads the washed garments on hazel bushes and low-hanging limbs, but there is a breeze, and this is no respite.
Time blurs.
Ravens discourse in the nearby trees, hoarse and raucous. She cannot understand them, and in the way of dreams, that seems strange, but when one lands on the willow nearest and looks at her, she offers it a smile. Its response mimics laughter before glossy black wings spread and carry it aloft. She watches it, wondering what it would be like to fly, until she can no longer even see the tiny black pinprick of its presence, and then she retrieves the next garment.
The sun is dipping low now, painting the world in reds and golds. When she turns back to the river, it flows beneath her hands like blood. She looks down and sees - for the first time, really sees - the garment she is holding, recognises with a shock the blue-grey fabric, stares at the two circular holes that pierce the chest, the deep crimson surrounding them -
She wakes abruptly, cool sweat trickling down her spine, to find she has sloughed off her blankets, and tries desperately to cling to the dream that no longer makes sense.
- finis -