New Order - 586
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Day 28:
Selection
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CLYDE: I saw Paul today. To think Paul, the same rat boy who had stolen his father's cigars, had more to offer us.
One of these days, me, my siblings, Bart, Martin, Stuart, and our friend, Paul, were playing marbles outside the front door of our house. When evening came, it was time to say goodbye to Paul. One of his relatives then came to pick him up for dinner. It wasn't Paul's father, or his older brother. It was a woman, dressed in the same costumes like any mother, but it wasn't his mother, not his aunt. Instead, Paul had an older sister who took care of him.
BARTHOLOMEW: ...I knew she was older than us at the moment Paul spoke her unforgettable name: Elizabeth. Sounded like my grandma's. A girl from chapel, devotee of Bahamut, like her mother.
A beautiful one, whose delightful ebony hair as cinnamon waved at us. A lady to be respected, like any lady in this world. She loved children, and we loved her too. When we looked at her, she looked at us. Flatteries aside, when we belaud Liza's voice, at the same time austere as an elder, and sedate as the breaths of a siren, her radiant smile gently opened, the shadow beneath us dissolved like salt in clear water, followed by the mellowly touch of lips on our foreheads, one by one.
Such honey lips of a passion-fruit blossom, syrupy than the combs of an entirety of a bee hive, and the slight faint touch of Venus in our shoulders. Damn you once again, Clyde. Although she kissed us too, you were the first one in line.
PRESCOTT: Sophia... Before I became one with her, she was a devotee of Bahamut.
The devotees of Bahamut are a religious group of people founded back in the 14th century. They believe Bahamut has the shape of a giant fish, who inhabits the clouds above Burmecia. These people are said to migrate from outside of Burmecia each month to do a procession at the land of our ancestors, the desert of Vube. There, they stay until seven days pass. And for another seven days, they stay at Burmecia, to purify their souls. They can't touch anyone until they take a bath at the river Kinneas, because that's where mostly the water, fallen by the rain and the mountain, between the fishes and other beings related to water, can be found.
We, soldiers, are also devotees of Bahamut in a certain way, except that our souls are purified not by our god, but by history itself, and the flowers they someday will bring to us, and unfortunately, we can't smell such.
BARTHOLOMEW: A week passed, and nothing about Paul's sister could be heard. That day may have passed, and all my thoughts were directed towards Paul's sister. In my head, I felt her, walking in the landscape of my dreams...
CLYDE: ...Like eels into a net, we followed , we saw her taking a bath. No clothes, no undies. Only the single way of world we followed before and after the birth, and the morals. With the ponytail off, her hair seemed longer, and the bends of her back... Geez, you haven't had enough, have you, Clyde? Thinking about these things is kinda relaxing... Don't get me wrong, Cynthia. First, you aren't here, and second, I was just a childish one. Was?...
BARTHOLOMEW: I don't know what happened to Liza. Maybe she passed away, like grandma, but now that I'm married, those thoughts don't bother me anymore. Because I trust in Lenneth, and she trusts in me, and what I feel for Lenneth is something more than what I felt as a kid for that woman.
Something above the flesh. Beauty does fade away at a certain time, like the reality built around us, and I'll stay with Lenneth, even after that day where the reality of our comes into stories to be told by our descendants. I never imagined that her love could make me want to settle down.
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Day 29:
Conception
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PRESCOTT: ...I needed to be cleansed. How itchy I was. Such thoughts never came into my mind. Breathe. Up the ladder, I saw that you once kept hid.
Why hid for so long, Sophia? Desire? No, don't think this of me. Apologies for what your eyes seem to get from me. To see everything we build up crumble to dust... how many breaths had we attained in our single lifes? Something so trivial, isn't it?
Rain is falling outside. Below the lonicera, when I'm on my own, winter kills. The aching of mine... ain't yours, but you felt it, didn't you? It was a question of time for the calling of the act. Instead of raising the curtains, we let them fall, as we become one, instead of two. There is time to kill, and nothing to lose.
Nothing, except this love. This raw love. I died with you, in an instant I felt alive, and clean. The cleanest we've ever been. The cherry, to be smelled by a child like me for the first time, soon withered. To find it, to accept my love, and see it was now gone. I thought it was, but another child like me was born from you, and the love of ours.
CLYDE: After all these sessions of training, holding this same javelin with one hand and another, all I want is to lick Cynthia's hair.
Yes, I wanna. To hold tight those ears, hurl in the lake, end up in the skies, touch the star... Though, last time I did it, Danny was born.
Kids. How am I supposed to avoid such? When I saw Danny's face for the first time, it was as if I already saw the same face on his brothers before. He woke up from his sleep, and pulled a face like he sucked a lemon in that morning, heh he... not that I find it funny, but it brings back such memories, nice ones.
Well, there are also some bad ones, but I'm kinda forgetful about those. I just forget and keep on going into such a life of mine.
BARTHOLOMEW: ...While us boys are called Nezumi by the elders, the girls are called by Nisan, which means 'marriage'.
Ever since birth, they are taught how to become a good wife. Lenneth... I once painted you, I know you remember it. I would never reject you, no I didn't. I never allowed such an idea to happen. Thought I wanted to, but I never did. So young you were, and still is... Lenneth.
Dirtied by my stain, how could I? The narrow way we found to reach each other... How awful, isn't it? Embarrassing? Why the smile above me? Where did we kept that noise? So quiet. We're off the rails. Feelings and secrets thought to be lost forever, I think we're going to the nether regions for what our minds are thinking.
PRESCOTT: On a family of many, and given the circumstances of our species, some don't bother choosing a name for the newborn. They just wrap the orange tie on their tails and call them by any name.
The fifth son I have was called 'Fifth Highwind'. Me, Clyde, Cynthia, Bart, this Lenneth... we all should be glad for staying alive for such a long time. While mostly Alexandrians and Lindbluniams and the people of Treno waited for nine months for one or two, we waited for the littles ones to come out of their mothers for three weeks.
Less than a month is needed for them to be born, yet not fully developed as humans. I admit, only a few of us are able to survive. So why bother with a name? It may sound cruel, but for many families who lost their children, a single son they once called by 'first' or 'ninth' one mattered, even if he had no name of any person.
CLYDE: ...For all the things I said, or pretended to, I just don't care for their outcome. Words of peace tend to bring war too; it's all a matter of probability.
The probability of saying something you might or not regret is relative to the percentage you get to know if your son will be born as a male, or a female. There's no way to know afterwards, just believe, like many of us do. I would want a girl, just to see if she'll grow up like her mother, or like me.
PRESCOTT: ...Fratley. That's the name of one of my sons, one of them that I recall by such name.
An unique name, who has been created by the junction of two unexpected words. How words came to be words, which orange appeared before, the color or the fruit? I ask myself these questions, for a world that has already lost it's meaning. This if we weren't allowed to create meanings.
Some are strong enough to create their own reality. Others just despise it, like Clyde. We all share dreams, and a goal in common. All we do want is to get out of here, run away to a shelter where we feel secure.
BARTHOLOMEW: If war or time or diseases can't kill our sons, then so does the nature of ours.
So fragile are our babies, compared to the ones born outside of Burmecia. They are more dependable of heat and milk than humans, and when there's not enough of both for an offspring, there's always a woman near to take care of them. A friend of family, a sister of the mother, the mother or the daughter of the new mother, even the nursemaid who helped in the childbirth.
Most of the nursemaids are from Cleyra, a nation, or better, a settlement located at Vube. A huge sandstorm surrounds what was once seen as a giant tree, called by Yggdrasil, for centuries. In these ancient times, there was a civil outbreak at Burmecia, and so a cult dissolved its ties from there, and went to the place of our ancestors, to found this Cleyra of now.
Why did this all start? We do not know why, we just forget, but it seems those from Cleyra don't. Maybe they forget the reason as well, but what they don't is how we do things there.
CLYDE: Cleyrans... They don't hold a grudge against us, because after I knew them they are all nice people, nicer than we could be someday, or never.
We, Burmecians, are exactly the same as the Cleyrans in blood, yet we seem so different in design, customs, and maybe a god. They don't seem to be known by the outside world, and they just want to remain this way. In the end, if it wasn't for them, many of our children, their children in a way, would have been gone, like Danny, or Jack, or maybe one of Prescott's five ones, or was there a sixty-one?
PRESCOTT: 'Do they treat us like people, anyway?'
That's what happens when you stay with Clyde for a long time. I also stood with his and Bart's father. He cared about his sons, and each man under his was like a son. Or someone to care about alike. Short lifes aside, so when Fifth's two years came, my gift to his was a name, because that gift mattered to me, and us, who recognized his effort to live.
His first name was Frăț, and it sounded kinda cryptic for a boy. It is related to 'fraternity'. But we were far more than friends. We shared the same blood before he opened his eyes, to reveal we also shared the same green. How lively, like a meadow, I thought. Thus, Frăț, following the suffix -ley, became Fratley.
CECIL: Beatrix... I carry on with no intentions of leading yours to become a soldier.
Those are the intentions and only of Madelene's wish. Before you become the same as me, you need to learn first from your mother what it is to be like her, so you'll be able to understand, by love or hate, what is to be a woman. You'll overcome such a state, or not if the will of yours is below the average of the words you are still learning to speak of. No matter how hard you try, you'll remain a woman you had been born into. Even young, the doll I gave you will tell you, not clearly, but as soon as you grew up, you'll see the truth.
Now, my dear Christophe... If they can't steal this pendant of mine, then it means they won't be able to take you within their 'after' cast by the last of the movements of my blade, who wishes their 'after'.