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lucius branwen / 10 — fox Graphics 1,489 POSTS Pronouns: she/her last seen Nov 20, 2024 21:48:56 GMT -5 but a butt ?	buck, d9 — fin Aug 30, 2022 0:45:29 GMT -5 Quote Select Post Deselect Post Link to Post Member Give Gift Back to Top Post by lucius branwen / 10 — fox on Aug 30, 2022 0:45:29 GMT -5 buck adroxis 38
	Last Edit: Sept 19, 2022 15:59:42 GMT -5 by lucius branwen / 10 — fox

lucius branwen / 10 — fox
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1,489 POSTS

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last seen Nov 20, 2024 21:48:56 GMT -5

but a butt ?

buck, d9 — fin Sept 6, 2022 21:21:47 GMT -5

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Post by lucius branwen / 10 — fox on Sept 6, 2022 21:21:47 GMT -5

Rimi

Vern dies.

Our father balances the books and there's a shuffling of sorts, a tremor all the way down to the last cent. A mine caved in Twelve three years ago and nickel became scarce for months. Our suppliers changed prices, we read through the ledgers and made the adjustments. Somehow, this is the same thing.

Mourn takes over what was Vern's.

There's a fresh hole in his chest.

He gets married.

Maybe that's all there is.

But I'm nineteen one morning and a memo is delivered to me. The cardstock is vellum over solid white.

I get wines and flowers and more cardstock perched like a flock of paper birds at the edge of my desk. Mother sends out the gifts to the bride to be. We get a lump sum from her family. I check the price of our marriage, thumbing through the books one night.

I still have yet to meet her.

And then, it's a month before the wedding. I lie there. My limbs don't feel like mine. Rimi fits against me in all the empty spaces. I touch my forehead to her back, I hold her, and I ask her to run away with me.

It's very soft. I almost don't hear it.

Okay.

In the afternoon, I meet her in the Justice Building, and she's wearing a white sundress, starry jasmines twined in her hair. And when we exchange our vows in the courtroom, she's crying, tears slipping down her cheeks with every word. But she smiles when I kiss her.

I think I'm in love.

The wedding with the Hongs is called off.

They cease business operations with us.

I get word that the clerk who married us is dead.

Father doesn't speak to me. All sons have to count for something after all.

But then, in a year, we have our baby boy.

Then, father meets him.

Blanche smiles like the sun.

And all is forgiven.

Blanche

The sun rises.

When he wakes up in the early morning, he plays with the bear Rimi sewed, babbling softly in his crib, smiling when he sees us. Father visits for the first time. Blanche laughs at him, grabs his finger with a fist.

He gets a little older and becomes a brother. He watches Fleur all day in her crib and falls asleep beside her. And he takes care of Ai too, learns all his favourite things and how to get him to stop crying.

He turns eight. He gets his first gun. A .22 Adroxis LR Rifle. He's patient. He understands. He can call his shot placements at fifty yards, a hundred, five hundred. It becomes natural, how it fits between his breaths, how his chest holds still in the moment before an inhale and he knows to pull the trigger.

He learns consistency. He learns control.

He is our first.

Rimi is very happy in our first year. She thinks about going back to teaching. She sings to Blanche, reads to him, holds my hand, leans against me, and feels like a sun.

But I don't tell her everything.

I don't tell her about the hole in Mourn's chest.

And I don't tell her what I'm going to do either.

Fleur

It's easy to separate everything else. I balance the books, go over the numbers, split it down the middle and that's enough.

"They deserve a normal childhood," Rimi says.

Blanche is ten and learning to shoot. I think about Vern and the knife through his neck. About how Mourn was heir before the funeral flowers had even finished wilting. She doesn't look at me. "It's fucked up." She says.

Blanche. Vern and the knife. Mourn with a scar.

"It is what it is. You should have known."

I should have married the Hong girl.

"I was barely over twenty." Her voice quivers. "What choice did I have?" She cries. I'm tired. She tells me I have nothing in me, that I'm empty and mean and cruel, and I sit there. I just sit there.

The handle spins, we turn to the movement, and Fleur walks in.

Gun left on the table, Fleur is sixteen. She retreats to her room. She doesn't answer my questions. The gun lies between us. She was eight not long ago, holding a pistol, a 9mm with her eyes squeezed shut. And she was eight not long ago, walking into our bedroom, asking in a soft voice if we could stop fighting.

She's a lot like Rimi. She has her eyes. She has her determination and strength. Her kindness.

And she's just like her mother.

When she walks up the podium.

When she does it for love.

Or something like that.

Ai

Vern dies.

I hate our father a little bit. Children are not assets.

But then, we're here, splitting our children between us, weekends and birthdays, bookkeeping dates, shuffled back and forth, numbers on a spreadsheet. Father never calls Rimi by name. That woman, he says. He threatens her for the kids. Then he threatens me. Then he wants me to remarry. Start over. Have different kids.

I say nothing. I keep the kids away from him and they continue being half here, half there. Ai cries every time he has to leave, and then again when he comes back.

Four years into marriage, we talk less. There's more of the starting and stopping, the swallowing back. Rimi still wants to be a teacher, but now she knows she can't. She knows a lot now. About Vern. About the rest of us.

I open the drawer beside our bed with the gun. And every time, she watches its metal eye like it's an alive thing. She looks at me and I'm somehow the same, more metal than bone.

It would be good if we stopped here. We know now. We're still kind to each other. It would be good if we didn't get married at all, but this is the best we have.

But I think of her, the jasmines in her hair, the smell of flowers over the gunpowder of the district I grew up in up. Her in the dress. Her in the Justice Building. The only thing I have ever wanted.

Instead, we have Ai. We drag it out for six more years until there's no more civility, no more patience. Nothing.

Ai is eight and comes home crying. He says he misses his mother.

Last Edit: Sept 19, 2022 15:58:52 GMT -5 by lucius branwen / 10 — fox

lucius branwen / 10 — fox Graphics 1,489 POSTS Pronouns: she/her last seen Nov 20, 2024 21:48:56 GMT -5 but a butt ?	buck, d9 — fin Sept 19, 2022 16:01:49 GMT -5 Quote Select Post Deselect Post Link to Post Member Give Gift Back to Top Post by lucius branwen / 10 — fox on Sept 19, 2022 16:01:49 GMT -5 divorced dad ripred_bot

lance Head Librarian 3,669 POSTS Pronouns: He/Him/His last seen Nov 20, 2024 10:03:13 GMT -5 gay and chaotic? call it gayos	buck, d9 — fin Sept 19, 2022 16:08:42 GMT -5 Quote Select Post Deselect Post Link to Post Member Give Gift Back to Top Post by lance on Sept 19, 2022 16:08:42 GMT -5 daddy? sorry. daddy? sorry. daddy? sorry. daddy? sorry. da- in all seriousness this is painfully beautiful, another excellent showing from u foxy
	credit to darsypoo uwu credit to fireflyz! credit to stare!