Cleaners From Venus - Stars Are Cold


August 17, 1784

...

The Kingdom of Burmecia is found on another of its frost seasons. Mean seasons.

Drops of rain falling from the ceiling become sharp stalactites. Dragoon teeth, as it's usually referred to. Even the thick air breathing changes from fog to ice. There'll be plenty of these stored inside the underground cabinet. The river Kinneas found beneath the many bridges became a slippery sidewalk. Bahamut can't freeze this entire kingdom, because beautiful days do not last forever, someone complains to the skies. Someone waiting to be heard.

All adults seem to do are to complain. Daddy never complained, no matter how tired he felt after the job. He won't feel tired anymore, won't lay over that couch, or will ever be brought back home. Only the cries for his name. Freya despises the rainy seasons, because they're wet like baths. Her tears aren't enough to wash her face, or to make the world around her any clean. Ashes already burnt remain grey, so does her skin.

— What's up, Jack? – Dan asked his cousin, standing with his feet upon a wooden chair, near the window. Rain keeps falling atop the mountains. Although it is a piece of cake to climb upon a tree, or to even stand atop the ceiling of his home far from sweet, Jack never went there, yet the boy gazes at that same distance.

For a while, it's fascinating how a few don't even share a time to gaze at such distances, then it gets boring. Dan talks bullshit, and so Jack looks somewhere below the highest of the mountains, just so as not to forget he's living on these same layers of reality where the once seasonal crops of a golden autumn are gone, and now only fallow lands remain. Mom is preparing soup, Jack though. At least, he won't feel as empty as his stomach.

— You know very well how I feel, Gappys. That's why you came here, right? – Said Jack. Did he need an answer to be brought? No. But to realise that someone else was there was enough of an answer, for many 'whys' not explained.

To carry on secrets until the grave... Nobody is flawless enough to deal with these kinds of things. Days dragged away, moments spent with someone else, time slipping away from the shore wharf before it all sunken; once, Jack almost lost his father. Now, Jack misses the same father, for sure. He lost half of what he was, but suffering can't be divided. Only shared by the same people, those near and away, out in their homes. No distance is known by death. The time when it happens can't be measured.

— Well, to be fair, I only came here to see your mom. – That same sentence would piss off the old Jack, something worth enough of a punch. But Jack had no need to do any of these things. He felt off of himself. At least, Dan was being sincere, something once unrelated to his kind. Or Jack's own.

Just a boy, that's what he is, despite being a Burmecian. So did his father, Dan's uncle as well. Bartholomew Brandford only fought a war when on the field, but the same wasn't enough to kill his. Jack remembers each time he demanded something for father to accomplish. There are no tears shed. They happen to appear easily when yawning. Jack needs a bit of air, and less pressure.

A breath comes and goes, but the awful silence remains. Dan doesn't even have time to tell his cousin about Learie, who was willing to pay a visit for Jack. And Freya too. She lies over her bed, inside the same room she shares with her brother. This room used to be Jack's own, before Freya grew up, enough to walk on her own, and to talk about something other than noise, but the first thing Freya ever did on her own... Was to cry.

It needed to be her, or someone else would force her to. That's what the infant later known as Freya did, even before those around it were aware that the 'it' was 'she'. Would it make a difference if Freya had been born as a boy? Only the name would change, but pain remains the same, through all ages. The pain doesn't only belong to an only gender, or even bothers to know what such is.

Pain is pain, who doesn't have any reason to be brought to it. Same pain couldn't be defined as static in nature, or in motion like tears coming from inside her eyes. They are still green, a lively color. Her skin is pinky, covered by grey fur. Someday, both will share the same color. Dad is sleeping, but soon Freya will have to wake up. No matter how much she attempts to close her eyes, and given a plenty of silence coming from the same room, Freya knows that there'll be soup, only by feeling a faint scent coming from the kitchen below.

The skies turn dark, and there are no stars to shine upon the skies. In Burmecia, they are already dead. The only brightness comes from the lamp oils lit outside, and candles are melting inside the houses. Wooden piles burnt on a fireplace, smoke rises from the chimneys, disappearing from the sight and flair... even the wind refuses to blow each one of the candles lit by Lenneth.

The Crescent didn't have to work today. How could she, after being told that her husband just... died. Only a word, thrown straight on her face, still unsettling her like a cicada moving towards an object, unafraid of those being faced by its ugliness and maladroit flight. A bad joke that nobody laughed at. Bart didn't faint in midair, or had the blade of a warrior struck in the heart. He didn't even ask to be killed.

It was a worthless death, belonging to the worthlessness of the men, caused by the same as well. Far worse than dying in sleep, or by being struck by a butter knife in the chest. The circumstances, how many shards of a broken glass were found, shattered alike the jigsaw his skull became didn't matter. Nobody was there, nobody was punished. And who else should have been? Nobody should ever be brought to the same suffering, even if they deserved some, though Lenneth.

She thought about many things, some yet to be done for this day. How easy it was to shed a smile just by curving her lips, and yet, Lenneth still had something to hide. How come others were able to smile and to not bother about their teeth, faces that became grimaces, exaggerated looks that don't fit with someone as serious as a Dragoon Knight. Lenneth tried once, but the mirror always showed how uncanny her face looked, how that idiotic expression changed into nothing, and how plain those lips became. It was the shock having its effect, finally.

Not that Lenneth was expecting for it to happen, or for Bart not coming home. He won't, nevermore. Lenneth swore that she would prepare herself for a hunt, beginning with tomorrow, but then a dish slipped out of her hands. Sips of tea were meant to calm down a person, not upset one further.

But a Dragoon Knight ain't cold-blooded as a dragon does, said Ezekiel, a longtime friend of Lenneth. He came in as soon as his duty, same as Lenneth, was over for today. It all became a personal matter, and these are the most dangerous to be dealt with. Despite the amount of work to be done, nothing prevented Dragoon Knights of making their own families. Even Ezekiel went there followed by his adopted daughter Hrist, falling asleep upon his lap. Even dragons kill Burmecian children to sustain their offspring, though Lenneth.

The only kind of emptiness meant to be filled in that night was the one who belonged to each stomach. Warm unlike each of their hands, bowls of soup were served on the table. Only the scent was enough to call the kids upstairs to their descent. Do not eat too much, or you'll suffer nightmares; this family was already living one, and only when morning arrives for all of them to realise they're awake. And alive, on the other side.

No matter the strength of impulse, Lenneth needed to stay close to those whom she cared about, instead of being further dragged away by such moments. At least, the Crescent still have the opportunity and time to share some with Jack, and Freya. These would not disappear out of her life, unlike a third son, that died even before it was given birth, or though a name, or even conceived outside of a thought, gone with time.

...