martyrs and saints { alara/kitt }
Jun 30, 2017 14:39:45 GMT -5
Post by admin dars on Jun 30, 2017 14:39:45 GMT -5
Empty hallways would soon be filled, and the wrought iron gate that stood in front of the Cross estate would mean something different. Beggars and street performers and people who lost their homes would see my father's contract as a beacon of hope: a shining spotlight at the hearth of hopeless darkness.
I wondered if any of them read the black and white before they signed their names in blood and began to move their few possessions into our house, or if they were so excited to have a bed to call their own that they didn't bother.
I hoped they were smarter than that.
"They're here," My mother whispered from behind me. Together, we watched the first few of my father's signed souls fall perfectly into what could have been their heaven or their hell.
I hated myself for it, but I clenched my jaw and ran to open the door.
In the months since the contract's beginnings, all of my fears had shone through. People couldn't meet payments and suffered the consequences; others were so terrified that they tried to run away. This house had been a prison of people's expectations my entire life, and now, there were others who knew exactly what I was going through. Clean, white walls that were decorated lavishly, cabinets and freezers full of food, parents who had stayed together: It seemed like it was all too good to be true.
And that was for one reason: It was.
Dirty money that even peacekeepers seemed afraid to investigate the origin of, gunshots from the garden every blue moon. My parents were not good people. And while they had been good parents, I had not ever been able to be grateful. I hated that. I hated how things were not always black and white, good and bad. I hated gray morality and I hated how the people who had fought to give me everything in my life, it turned out, were only taking away from others.
"It is called redistribution, Kitt. Not stealing," My mother claimed, popping an apple pie into the oven. She wiped her hands on her apron while I snatched one of her unused apples. "What we give to you is rightfully yours." I rolled my eyes at her. "And before it was rightfully mine, it was rightfully someone else's." She had huffed out in that way she always did when I was right, like when she knew she had no good arguments so she acted as if I had hurt her feelings.
"Sorry," I offered, turning to leave from the kitchen. She didn't reply.
Our house seemed both bigger and smaller since the arrival of our new guests. While it was completely ordinary for me to pass at least three strangers in my own hallways before breakfast, there were two ways to look at it. There was either a lot of space occupied, which would have made it small, or there was a lot of space to be occupied, which made it big.
I turned down the left wing, where all of the contracts were staying. Most of them would be out trying to beg, borrow, and steal to keep their room and board and lives, but I saw one light on in the dark hallway. I didn't have to look in order to know whose room it was, but I told myself I did in order to have an excuse to talk to her.
I found Alara in her room, door cracked open. She carefully connected wires to other wires and tightened screws and pressed buttons on her computer. Reading spectacles sat on the bridge of her nose, and her hair was pulled back in a messy heap on top of her head. He liked seeing her like this— consumed by her craft. It was Alara in her very best element.
Here, she was an art piece, or a machine, making people cry for what she was, what she could do. Beauty in a raw form.
I leaned against the door frame, my arms crossed over my chest.
"I didn't know you wore glasses, Tink." I took a bite out of my apple, chewing it up and swallowing it before talking again.
"Are those prescription, or do you just realize how cute they make you look?"
