woe
- a condition of deep suffering from misfortune, affliction or grief
-ruinous trouble
The stone has martyred me beyond any recognition. I am barely blinking. Not awake.
I crashed below and lost consciousness. Knowing that my spinal cords and many other vital things had taken a hit.
A part of me is half-awake in searing agony when I regain consciousness shortly, the other lulled in by numb pain and nerves that don't feel anything anymore.
The mud around me seeps into my pores. Like a swamp, it bleeds into me with water and dirt. I can't move. I can't breathe.
I shouldn't be alive. I shouldn't be alive and I won't be for much longer. My heartbeat is trashing at my side, where the blood pours out.
I can't fight the swamp. This is, strangely fitting, I realize, my grave.
Our religion is power and we are our own gods. But where do gods go when they die? Do they implode in a million pieces and settle like stardust in a void? Are they forgotten in their endless bodyless voyage? Just as they are forgotten easily in the real world?
We tell ourselves we honor and remember the dead. But half of it is pretense, and the other half is disregard. We mourn for selfish reasons.
I just blink dizzy up a few times. It is the only thing I can do on my own. A sun blinks back in weak rays. No sounds mix into my brain. Something moves above the pit that has become my burial ground.
My eyes close again.
It would be foolish to believe my life plays before my eyes as I fade. At least not like you'd expect. My subconsciousness chooses memories and skips through them like footage of a lost day.
There is no one judging your afterlife or whatever emptiness follows. We do what we have to. We are who we are, forged by hands that are bigger than our own when we grow up.
Growing up. Children have to do that, I suppose. That reminds me of that cat.
I haven't thought about that cat for a while. A lithe, slim feline. A black, elegant creature adorned with a collar and bells. The only animal my mother ever really liked, because cats come and go. You don't need to look after them like dogs or children. The cat doesn't like the bells. But it makes it easier for my mother to know where it goes. And it makes it easier for other people because the birds soar through the residence some days like an angry swarm or waves leaping at the piers at the river when the big ships drive past.
I remember her finger crawling over the black, silky fur when she holds the cat too tight a second, then lets go with her ditzy, inconsequential smile to return to her sheets sprawled over the table. I remember sitting on the carpet, pulling a string over the ground to play with it. And suddenly, it is my paw on the string, and I feel the tugging leash for the first time. As soon as it starts, it ends. And the cat scowls, hisses. I try again and again, but I can't manage to do it.
I know I should ask my father.
But my father isn't there, and so I continue tugging at the cat's head, trying to take it over whenever it is too close. It takes days. But days are blurry for a very little child. They can be millennia or a fast-paced moment.
Time is fluent for the newborn and for the dying.
That cat bends under my childish pressure, and I don't yet understand the nature of an animal, and I am far from gentle. A cat and a child are both stubborn and wild, and I win the fight.
"Look," I say. The cat sits still when I want to. The cat tilts the ears when I demand it. I make it move and roll and meow.
My mother doesn't look up from her sheets.
"Look," I repeat, and the cat grows frantic under my grip. It scowls low again, black slick fur standing up, tail whipping. "Look what I can do."
"Not now," Is all the answer I get.
And with the same temper as an angry feline or a scorned child possess, the cat flings itself over the table and ruins her notes and all the sheets make a flurry of paper. The cat bites into her thumb when she tries to catch it. Silver blood drips on the green carpet and her white dress.
Her eyes are small slits.
"Now you look," I say, satisfied with the result.
I am banned from the music room for months.
"Why didn't you say anything?" My father asks a while later. "You need better practice and I promise you'll be able to control all the animals you want to."
I don't tell him the cat didn't do it by accident. I don't tell him I made it bite my mother.
That cat disappears from the house and my memories. I don't question coming and going animals. It is normal. We use them. We breed them. We give them away and exchange them.
Wide awake at night, a part of me listens to the haunting of laughter and a piano downstairs, seeping through the walls. The other part listens to the sound of the residence itself.
I am too small for the big bed. I drown in the sheets and still clutch them tightly with my small hands.
The floorboards are cold under my tiny feet. I stare at the doorknob as if it will magically open by itself. If I had the power to move things with my mind, my child self ponders, tilting a head that's bearing wild strands curling. Maybe that'd help. Maybe that'd make me braver.
Light burns in the study. My father is engaged in some talk. A big, black dog lurks around his feet. My hand ponders on the doorframe. One toe is bathed in the orange light. I watch his face. The tired eyes. The concentrated line on his brow.
Then my foot retreats in the darkness. As fast and quietly as I can, I sneak past. I move on. If he doesn't have time to leave the room the whole evening, he doesn't have time for me now. I am taught better than to disturb my parents or anyone in the family when they have business.
Downstairs, the laughter swells. My tiny body creeps forward shivering. But I don't want to move there. I don't want to be banned from another room.
I sit down above the staircase and watch a small spider in the corner of the highest edge above my head on the ceiling.
Try to sweep into it by my own, just as I have started to learn, just as I did with the cat.
In the morning, when the stars have faded and the sky is pink and orange like a basket of fruits, I still sit by the staircase. I cup the spider in my fingers.
Later that very same day, we get family visit. I don't look at my cousin. She is older than me. She isn't as dull as some of the others. But she wouldn't like me and my questions about spiders, would she?
As soon as my father moves into his study again and my mother disappears after a fruitless attempt of conversation, I lure back the creatures for further research.
Sitting cross-legged below a single cobweb created by many feets and strings, I cup the small pinpoint black creatures in my palms. They tickle me.
The hem of a green dress appears beside me, rustling. I block the way. That must be it. I look at the spiders in my hand and then concentrate on the fine, shimmering green of the skirt.
"Do you like spiders, Daliah?"
I look up into my cousin's face. A very, very, pretty face. A face that doesn't exactly smile, but doesn't look hostile. Straight, up, sleek dark hair, and a very shiny bit of jewelry.
"I think I like spiders," I answer, slow, ducking my head. "I think I like snakes too. My father lets me hold them. My mother doesn't like them at all. She says spiders are scary."
"Your mother isn't a Viper," Larentia says, and she says that with enough force to cut down a tree clean.
Instead of walking away, she smoothes over her dress and extends her hand. Motions for me to stand up. It isn't a friendly request. It is a definite offer and a demand. Like a queen would make it.
That's it, my small brain decides in hazy adoration for being noticed. Larentia is like a queen.
And me and the spiders crawl up to follow her.
I don't crawl anywhere now. I just feel something in my head, and a familiar headache spreads along with something else.
"Is she..?"
"Oh," someone else notes. "There is still plenty of things going on in her head. I can assure you."
"Move out of the way. Now."
"The gunshot first. Then her back. And all the rest."
I catch a glimmer of armor and silver hair. Of a hand that's touching me.
Small hands, and very, very dirty nails. A lifted gun, a small nervous sound. Shoulders drawn together. A box rests to my feet, dark stinger of a scorpion shaking. A boy stands in front of me.
"Ready? I'll do it. You got to catch it."
He waits, tilts his head framed by a small ray of sunlight, and his hair is as silver-grey as the pistol in my hands. "I can catch it."
"Ready?"
He makes himself bigger than he is. I swallow.
A shot whips through the air, a pang, and my fingers loosen themselves over the trigger. My hand slips. And I aim wide. Because this boy is like my brother, and I can't hurt him, even with our bragging.
I don't feel anything.
I don't feel anything when I get swung around and lie flat on the ground. All I hear is the blood pumping through my body. Despite being younger than me by some, Evangeline has just flat kicked me on the ground and I roll like a wet burlap sack.
"That was very good," I say, swiping away blood dripping from my nose. "But I didn't expect anything else."
She helps me up. Her braid swings over her shoulder, tightly pulled together, like mine.
I don't need to say anything. We share some nod and continue on.
I don't say anything. I couldn't if I wanted to. My jaw is still crushed. Blood has stopped pouring out of me. I lie in some rubble, dragged to the side, staring at a stone ceiling.
Another gun, another family, another day.
Short nails, one single, a small ring on my finger. A green sleeve and a braid flung over my shoulder when I look back. Two faces watch the marks on the paper- one is scarred and calm, with hair tied back. With arms crossed behind her back. The other has eyes that look at the world as if it is a tactical map with different signs and warnings to decipher. He looks so young.
They're both dressed in the semblance of loose pants and sturdy boots, uniforms not to flatter you much. I smell the sweat and dirt, something burned lingering over theirclothes and tainting the air in the room even after they have changed and returned. It is the smell of gunshots I know well. It is the smell of flames, of blood, ash, the smell of death. The smell of war.
"Your footing is good." Ellyn's voice instructs. " Your aim needs some more practice, Daliah."
I raise my eyebrows. "My aim is flawless. I hit. What else do you want me to do?"
"Breathe right."
How would I breathe wrong? I don't breathe wrong. They are both just nitpicking on me. And here I thought in this family it could be different.
I scrunch my face together. Ellyn takes a scraping step.
"When you are tense, you draw your shoulder blades together. You need to stop doing that."
"The rest of her posture is acceptable," My husband says. There is that attentiveness again, burrowing through his whole face.
"Oh," I mock. "I am so flattered my husband finds me acceptable."
His face flattens a little if that is even possible behind the stiff edges he presents. I find you more than acceptable most days."
"Maybe we should do this more often." I put the gun down slow, hand away from the trigger. My lips are twisting in some kind of grimace, wishful thinking makes it a smile. "If this is the only way for me to get any compliments."
"You're still mad I called you a bat?" He shakes his head. His hair is so short. If I would run my fingers along the side I would feel the shaved off stubbles. A buzzing cut for military purpose. He'll start growing it out in the months before we fight and he dies. "It was just a matter of fact."
"And you are an utter fool. That is a matter of fact."
He makes an exasperated sound. Turns half away.
It's silent without the gun howling and our voices bickering. I try to stand straight, but I feel the way my breath gets caught and I am tensing up.
Her hand touches my shoulder, a factual touch concentrated on the task ahead. I coil together, want to run off.
My skin seems to burn where she touches me. One flat palm on the ridges of my tingling nerves, wandering between my shoulders. It is almost reassuring in the guidance process.
I pick up the gun, take a step away from him and try to do as she tells me.
I move a foot right, take a breath, raise my hands.
Aim.
Shoot.
I hit the inner circle of the target again, bullet ripping through it.
"Better," She praises me and pats my shoulder once before retreating.
I scoff softly.
"Better," someone says, and pulls hair out of my face with a flat and almost soft palm sprinkled with blood and dirt. I look up and for a second I can't separate Evangeline and her mother, and I am confused to who is leaning over me before her ruined, wild grey hair hangs over her side and I blink, try to catch her expression and understand it.
The pain spreads through my jaw and spine like fire. Like a grenade ripping my nerves apart. A gunshot penetrates me again and again and it doesn't stop now that the numbness does and the hands that put me back together try to hold me still-
A broken spine. Broken ribs. A shattered jaw and broken teeth.
My body reassembles slow under touches.
In truth, this all takes very little time.
When my jaw starts to get fixed, I inhale, make a low his, then start to scream. Tears are welling in my eyes heavily and as much as I try, I can't blink them all away.
I stop the soft hand from the Skonos working on me.
Different pairs of eyes watch from their places. I have Evangeline on my right, my father hanging back, and even slithery Samson watches.
I can barely open my jaw while it gets mended. I still hold out one hand.
"Let me keep some of the scars," I say, barely understandable, shattered and crying. Just in more spite, probably.
It hurts so much I black out again.
When I wake up, my face is tingling. But only soft like the hands from the Skonos.
And I keep the memento, the token of this day. I will treasure it with the same intensity as the memory of the dead. I will harbor it within, a piece of glass in pressure. I will never forget it. My forte and my shield. I keep a scar and I keep the pain.
The scar is my badge to the real meaning of family.
What does family mean?
Family means everything to me.
Family means valor. Duty. Pride.
Family means something I loathed.
Something I lost.
Something I missed.
Something I yearned.
Something I regained.
Family is blood, family is past.
Family is strings that weave in threads of silken lies and golden truths, unspoken pain shared and burdens shackling you to each other.
Family is all I had. And all I will ever have.
ᴏɴᴇ ᴍᴏʀᴇ ᴇᴘɪʟᴏɢᴜᴇ/ᴛᴇᴀꜱᴇʀ ᴛᴏ ɢᴏ ᴀɴᴅ ᴛʜᴇɴ ᴛʜᴇ ꜱᴛᴏʀʏ ɪꜱ ꜰɪɴɪꜱʜᴇᴅ.
ᴛʜᴀɴᴋ ʏᴏᴜ ꜰᴏʀ ʀᴇᴀᴅɪɴɢ ᴘᴇᴛɪᴛᴇ ᴠᴇɴɪɴ ᴀɴᴅ ꜱᴜᴘᴘᴏʀᴛɪɴɢ ᴍᴇ ᴀʟʟ ᴀʟᴏɴɢ ᴛʜᴇ ᴡᴀʏ! ʏᴏᴜ ᴋɴᴏᴡ ᴡʜᴏ ʏᴏᴜ ᴀʀᴇ ;)
ɪᴛ ᴍᴇᴀɴꜱ ᴀ ʟᴏᴛ ᴛᴏ ᴍᴇ ʏᴏᴜ ʟɪᴋᴇᴅ ᴅᴀʟɪᴀʜ ꜱᴏ ᴍᴜᴄʜ ᴀɴᴅ ɪ ᴡɪʟʟ ʙᴇ ɢʟᴀᴅ ᴛᴏ ᴄᴏɴᴛɪɴᴜᴇ ᴛʜɪꜱ ꜱᴇʀɪᴇꜱ.