A/N: so this chapter and the next one contains two brief flashbacks. The first (in this chapter) is when Luna is about fifteen/sixteen, the second (in the next chapter) takes place a few years before present day.
"And between the sand and stone
Could you make it on your own?"
- Wherever You Will Go by The Calling
"So, did the Flame Keepers teach you how to do this?"
Luna shook her head in answer, counting the fish that hadn't managed to escape from their nets during the chaos. It should have taken less than a minute but her mind, which had become sluggish and chilled in the aftermath of their fall, struggled to keep count. Every few seconds, she found herself having to start again, her patience wearing thinner and thinner. "No. These kinds of survival skills weren't of much interest to them. They taught us a bit about hunting and the like, enough that we could get by for a short time if we ever found ourselves stranded alone, but more than that wasn't necessary. Commanders don't live alone and they can rely on others for their needs."
This was something she'd only come to take stock of after her Conclave.
It was a significant lack of foresight on the part of her mentors. For all of Titus' teachings on the necessity of isolation when it came to being the Commander, he had failed to grasp just how dependent each and every novitiate was on the company of others.
But, then, emotional solitude was far different from physical isolation - and Titus was a devotee of the first.
Of course, there was always the chance that this oversight had been intentional.
An attempt to make nightbloods as dependent on the people they served as those very people were on them. A binding trap. If that was the case, then she felt a renewal of contempt for her teachers.
"So who did teach you?"
"Derrick." Luna said no more, though she knew Raven had to be curious of this name that would occasionally arise in conversation between them. Of everyone, he was the hardest to speak of. The memory of his death - of her own role in it - rushed to the surface, just as it always did; an onslaught she struggled to stand fast against. She would become accustomed to it eventually, just as she had her brother's. But not yet.
It had taken her years to find peace with Sol's memory and Derrick had only been returned to the water little more than a moon ago.
The pain was too fresh.
His passing a blistering wound rather than a scar.
Thankfully, Raven seemed to get the hint and didn't pry. She was more likely than most to understand those things that needed to be left alone.
(inwardly, Luna cursed herself. All the time she'd spent trying to coax the other woman into discussing more painful topics and she was the one shying away.
But Luna knew her limits. And she knew she was teetering close to the border of one right now. If she ever discussed Derrick in full, it would have to be when her emotions were back to a more steady equilibrium, not when her skin felt like a cage she wanted to leap out of)
"It's a good catch," the mechanic observed, seeming almost surprised by the fact as she looked down at their nets. "I was thinking we'd maybe get one or two."
She was right, though Luna was experienced enough not to share her surprise in their good fortune. She'd known when she suggested this method just how bountiful it was likely to prove.
They'd caught twenty-seven fish, enough to last the island's inhabitants three meals if they were divided equally among them. The rest they'd allowed to rejuvenate and go about their merry way. With Praimfaya drawing near, their days were numbered but Luna would not deny them the grace to live through all that remained.
"Normally, I'm far more careful with this method," she started, still sorting through the bundle of slimy scales in her net, even though she had reached satisfaction with her count a minute ago. The repetitive action was close to soothing - and she needed that right now. "It can be unsustainable. If you take too many fish from the same body of water, the population dies out." Luna nodded to herself, remembering the teachings Derrick had passed onto her. The only thing that remained of him. "'Only take what you need and alternate between different water sources to give them time to recover'." Her gaze traveled back to the river, imagining that she could see the poison working its way into the water's every cell and crevice, polluting it as mercilessly as the radiation that had destroyed her beloved sea. "This toxin can be damaging for their environment. Over time, it alters the water source and fish start to die - mostly the smaller and younger ones. It can flow downstream, tainting the rest of the water."
She'd never seen it herself.
Everyone knew the importance of sustaining each and every food source they had access to. Even those who had no care for the world they lived in, understood the necessity of its continued survival if they were to survive as well.
Luna thought of the sea of dead fish she'd woken to one morning, circling the oil rig. Such devastation. In the blink of an eye.
Would the sea ever have the chance to recover the way they allowed these rivers to? Luna supposed her blood would see to it that she found out. Unless such recovery could only be achievable over millennia. She didn't think even nightblood could see her surviving that long.
(her blood wouldn't deny her at least that mercy)
It was more likely that all she had to look forward to was a world of decay. Drained of life and purpose. Utterly removed from the world she had before her now. An empty shell of what was, perhaps never to be filled with life again.
Her blood was indeed a curse, to make her pay witness to such desolation. And if the Sky People failed in their quest to synthesize it, she was the only person who would pay witness to it.
(despite what John might think, that wasn't a miracle)
Blood cooling, Luna gazed into the shimmering surface of the stream, remembering another bed of water that had once provided for her.
"It's said that in the old days, there used to be many fish. The rivers and seas were overflowing." Derrick's voice washed over her, the soothing cadence of it impossible to turn from. "But then the Dark Days ruined that. Many perished. Some survived though. Adapted, became stronger for their misfortune."
It was nothing Luna hadn't heard before. "I heard they started to die long before that. The Dark Days just hastened their demise."
They sat by a tidepool, watching a small school of fish that circled within. Luna was hungry but she dared not rush the man in his process or his teachings. She valued all he had to say far too much.
Derrick was five years older than her and had been on his own for longer than that, much longer than she'd been herself.
Luna couldn't comprehend how he'd done it.
But she wanted to. Hoped he would teach her. If he could.
Derrick nodded at her statement, stuffing the gratings of nut into a leaf. "That may be true. There are other effective ways to fish, Luna, and I will teach you all of them. But I wanted to show you this in case you were ever alone again, without the time or means to make any of our tools."
Her countenance darkened, fingers gripping the rough rock beneath her. "Are you leaving me?" She'd only been in his company for going on a few months now but already she'd grown attached.
That was her fault.
Grow up, Luna. You're not a child anymore. Of course he's going to leave.
Everybody leaves.
And, usually, that was her fault too.
"What?" Derrick looked startled. "No."
Her eyes narrowed as she tried to discern the verity of his statement. "Then why would I be alone again?"
Derrick's features smoothed. "Hopefully you will never be. But we can't predict where life will take us."
No, we can't.
Luna had mistakenly believed that such a thing was in her power once. She'd been told so many times what to expect from her future that she couldn't imagine anything else, couldn't foresee a reality in which any other circumstance took place.
But that future had never come to be.
She'd refused to let it.
Sometimes Luna wondered whether she'd made the right choice. The darkness that had seeped into her veins when she thrust the knife into her brother's chest, the darkness that had failed to flee when she yanked it out, had followed her stumbling feet as she made her escape, dogging her steps like a starving pauna, determined to be granted its feast.
Now it had been almost three years and she still felt it around her, in her.
Had felt it most in the aching loneliness that had clung to her in the time before she found Derrick.
She'd been so alone.
And cold.
But around Derrick, she was almost warm and she strived not to grow accustomed to that feeling. Reliant on it.
(knew she was failing)
Luna looked into the tide pool. "I'm never going to be alone again. I'm going to make sure of it."
Derrick hesitated. "Being alone isn't so terrible. It's even peaceful at times. I didn't mind it."
The darkness swirled in her gut, resenting that he had found peace with something she never could. "I hated it."
There'd been nothing to distract her from the thoughts and feelings that constantly assailed her heart. No-one to hold her in the night and tell her it would be okay.
There was only her.
And she was poor company.
"That's because you went from having many to having none," Derrick countered, though not without sympathy. "You had no one and nothing to distract you from your pain. Loneliness in such instances is always an affliction. But if you come to be at peace with yourself, you will not crave the company of others so much."
Luna doubted that. "Why was loneliness different for you?"
"I lost everyone of importance a long time ago. I had to get used to having only myself to love and, over time, that became easier." He touched the sand somewhat tenderly. "And I suppose I always loved this world more than I loved the people in it. There is no loneliness when it is always at my fingertips." He looked up, eyes burning with demand. "Find something that will always be at yours."
It didn't sound so silly.
Perhaps, it was even doable.
She liked him well enough to indulge him in the attempt, at any rate.
Luna looked out at the ocean, contemplating. The waves rose and fell, a steady, never-ending surge of motion. At night, she would lie awake listening to its song, relying on the constant hum to ease her passage into sleep. There'd been no waves in Polis. "They say the sea is eternal."
He nodded. "The sea is a friend unafflicted by mortality, but she is not always loving. She would kill you as soon as she would cradle you."
Perhaps. But she chose to cradle me. She did not send me down to the depths, though she had her chance.
She had shown restraint where Luna had not. Spared her as she had not spared her brother.
Luna could appreciate the significance of such grace.
She hummed. "So would I. Once. I will not hold that against her."
His lips tilted into the faintest of smiles - his smiles were always small, never large, but they warmed her like they were as big as the sun. She'd waited years to be warm. Was glad she did not have to wait any longer. "Then you will never be alone again."
Luna cleared her throat, brought herself back to the present, to the curious eyes of the woman beside her. When she took in the sun overhead, it did not seem to have passed further down, so she could not have been absent for long. It was hard to tell, though. And growing even harder to pull herself back at all. The past was painful but it also held a comfort the present could no longer provide.
During those lonely years after her Conclave, she had allowed herself to become lost in it. To sink into the memory of things she could never have back.
Luna was less keen to do so now. She knew the consequences. But time would tell whether her reluctance remained.
Time always told.
Luna cleared her throat, tracing her memory back to what she'd been saying when her mind took a wander. It was easy enough to do. She'd had lots of practice in her life. "So we don't use this method often. Restraint is imperative if we want to keep ourselves and the world we live in alive." Her mouth pinched. "But we don't need to worry about that anymore."
The world was dying.
The fish were dying.
If they didn't kill them, the radiation soon would.
It was an unavoidable truth, and one Luna must force herself to come to terms with if she were to have any hope of bearing the future that awaited her.
She could feel Raven's eyes on her, the heaviness of her concern - and perhaps pity - but she didn't care to meet it at the moment. Not while her thoughts were so disjointed, her hands still trembling slightly with each fish she inspected.
She didn't have the energy to reassure Raven that she was okay. A part of Luna feared that one kind word would break her. She couldn't take kindness right now. Her hands, despite the chill of the water, felt hot with the memory of the blood they had once drowned in.
Derrick's blood.
Her brother's blood.
The blood of people she'd vowed to protect.
No, Luna couldn't take the kindness.
". . .[in] the East. . . this [Western] idea of subjecting Nature to the commands or service of man according to his selfish desires has never been cherished. . . Nature has been our constant friend and companion, who is to be absolutely trusted. . ."
- Daisetz Suzuki, 1988
A/N: OK, raise your hand if you're still reading this?
