Burning Bridges [Ena]

Eastern Orange
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"I'm Scandinavian, God dammit. We love to be naked!"

Burning Bridges [Ena] Jan 14, 2012 22:37:30 GMT -5

Post by Eastern Orange on Jan 14, 2012 22:37:30 GMT -5

The hill in the corner of our property is covered not with a herd of sheep like usual, but with a black-coated herd of sheep-minded people. I can’t hear their weeping from where I stand, hidden by a group of trees toward the base of the steep knoll, but I can see their faces, distorted by the rain and their grief. Fake grief. These people were strangers to my mother. They don’t really care and they deserve to be here. It should just be me. I was the only one who cared for her.

I watch the obsequies from afar. I have no desire to be up there with those people who are hovering over my good mother’s grave like the vultures they are. I don’t know who most of them are, but I do recognize some off my distant relatives. Severe looking Aunts, and round, ruddy uncles, with their dim witted offspring crowd around the shell that once held the essence of my mother. They needn’t be here; they were largely absent from our lives when my mother was alive, and it should be the same in her death. They are here for themselves. They just want to put their guilty consciences to rest. Selfish pigs.

I shift impatiently in the shadows, waiting for them to disappear back into the holes they crawled out of. The ceremonies end, and now everyone is just milling around, offering their apologies to each other about my mother’s death. At least, I assume so. As I said, I can’t hear them. All I care about is that they aren’t leaving. My lip turns up into a snarl, and my fingers curl into fists. I want them gone, so I can pay my respects, but they simply won’t budge. Eventually, I get fed up with waiting and march up the hill.

As I reach the crest, those gathered turn in look at me. Their faces immediately assemble into looks of pity. I glare at them all, daring them to say anything. An uncle steps forward. Richard, I think his name is. “Ah, Sentinel. There you are. We were all wondering why you weren’t at the ceremony.” He says, something like anger colors his voice. I narrow my eyes at him, but say nothing. His wife detaches herself from the background to stand next to him. “What would your mother think? She thought the world of you and this is how you replay her?” I’m shocked by her audacity, and for a second I can’t reply, but then that second passes and I’m all fury and no self control. “My mother is dead.” I say flatly. It’s her turn to be taken aback. “She is not doing much thinking, is she?” The woman, whose name I can’t remember for the live of me, looks like I spit in her face. A thrill goes through me. “Truth be told, if she could think, she’d be thinking why her family, who left her to the wolves when she married the poor sheep farmer, dared to show up to her funeral when they couldn’t even be bothered to help her when she was sick. She’d understand why I wasn’t here. She wouldn’t want me mourning with you arrogant assholes.” Wow, that felt wonderful. I wasn’t remotely done. I was ready for a fight.

Richard steps forward, getting his wife out of my line of sight. “Listen, you insolent brat, we came here to pay our respects. I understand what you are—“ I hold up a hand to cut him off. “You can stop right there, uncle Dick. You don’t fucking understand, and I’d appreciate it if you would just shut the hell up, right now.” His face turns purple, and he presses his lips together. “Now,” I continue, “since my mother is dead, and my father has already left for God knows where, this is my property. And you know what I hate? I hate stupid, arrogant city fucks like yourselves, tromping around on my property. You have no business here. Just go.” The faceless blur of people behind my uncle stare at me in horror. I didn’t know most of them, so I have no idea who I just insulted and if they are actually arrogant people from the city but I don’t really care. Everyone is the same to me. My uncle’s face is a storm cloud. “If I’m not mistaken, you abandoned your mother for the city, so don’t look down your nose at us. We have more in common than you’d care to admit.” Uncle Dick looks satisfied with the expression that crosses my face, and considers himself the winner. I don’t fucking care at this point; my mother is dead and these people are keeping me from saying goodbye. I may be a bad person, but that doesn’t mean I’m petty.

“Just go.” I repeat, firmer. “You have no idea what bridges you just burned.” Dick’s wife snarls as she passes me, following behind her husband. The rest of the people slowly start to leave, none of them look at me.

Ena Mena Mina Mo
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The late mouse gets the cheese.

Burning Bridges [Ena] Jan 14, 2012 22:51:22 GMT -5

Post by Ena Mena Mina Mo on Jan 14, 2012 22:51:22 GMT -5

Hadena’s hands were slow as she wound a knitted scarf around her throat, pulled on tall woolen socks, laced her boots behind her ankle, straightened her coat, and otherwise avoided walking out the door for as long as possible. She checked to see that the smoldering coals in the hearth wouldn’t spill out onto the floor and burn through the hardwood or, better yet, burn the whole shack down, even though she knew full well that they wouldn’t. There was a rusting grate that could be pulled like a curtain across the face of the hearth to prevent such misfortunes. But she’d check the icebox too, just to make sure it wouldn’t spill and make her ceiling snow, if it meant delaying the time that she knew she’d have to face Sentinel and try to smile for him. The last time she’d seen Sentry….She’d been sixteen. Acmon had just died of a fever he wasn’t strong enough to fight, and none of them were rich enough to cool. It had been six years. And Sentry…..She still didn’t know what he’d been thinking, why he’d done it. Why he’d kissed her. But he had, and that tiny speck of warmth and shocking comfort had been so unexpected to her freezing heart that it burned, a crack appeared in that slow-beating muscle, and she lashed out with her hand the way her heart never could. The look on his face when she hit him…. God, you would have thought she’d just put a broken knife to his throat. That startled, shattered expression on her face was the one that hovered over her shoulder every morning as she woke alone. It silently sighed every time she purposefully pushed someone away. It was her every day reminder her of why she lived alone and why she planned on dying alone too. Not only did every other person in existence have the simple ability to break her heart if she let them, but if they let her, she could do it too, and Hadena never wanted to be the cause of that much pain ever again. She might as well have killed him that day, just like the expression on his face said she had.

Finally, she could delay no longer. The funeral for his mother, his beloved, fragile mother, started in six minutes, and it would take her that long to walk up the long hill dividing their separate homesteads. Her violin, where it rested quietly under the bed, hidden by the hem of the quilt, seemed to raise a single brow in question. She had loved this woman, and now this woman was dead. Would she not play her to peace? Her violin said all the things her heart never could, and Sentry’s mother had always loved to hear the sweet songs….

But Hadena hated to draw attention to herself, and if she played at the funeral, every eye and every ear would be hers, just as she never wanted them to be. She’d much rather be a ghost, seeing and hearing others but incapable to harm them because they never knew she existed. Unfortunately, Hadena, who loved no one, still breathed, while Sentry’s mother, who loved and was loved by many, lay cold in the frozen, unforgiving earth that wouldn’t accept her for months yet, and would fight her now as though the woman were some kind of outcast it wished to keep as far away from it as possible.

But then again, wasn’t that exactly what Hadena was doing to everyone else in the world every day? Fighting their attempts to enter that cold, frozen place of hers that everyone else let flourish like a flowerbed….

Hadena left the shack without her violin, knowing now that she would be late, and praying that hopefully this small breach in etiquette would at least allow her presence to go unnoticed, if she remained at the back of the crowd that was sure to gather. No one had to know she was there. No one had to wonder why she came to this funeral and not all the others—there was never a shortage of deaths in the wintertime. They didn’t have to know she’d even come. She could continue living her quiet, disconnected and lonely, but safe life without anyone to disrupt it with their sideways glances and curious questions. No one had to know.

Hadena left the house without bothering to lock it—the only thing of value she owned was that family violin, and as far as she knew, no one else in the area knew how to play it, so what good would it be to them? Trudging up the hill, through six inches of snow that gained a hard crust where the wind had blown over it in swift gales, Hadena realized only when she was halfway there that she’d forgotten her mittens, but she couldn’t go back for them now. After a certain point, every late arrival was noticed, and given all the undo attention that she was striving to avoid. When she finally crested the hill, hands wedged deep into her pockets, someone was already speaking. Hesitating only once, Hadena crunched up behind the very last of the mourners and ducked her head, hoping that maybe Sentry wouldn’t see her. He didn’t deserve to have her presence worsen what was already the worst day of his life. He deserved better than what she could give him. He always would. Her bare fingers, cold in the shallow pocket, touched against the last, tiny dreamcatcher she’d been working on to give to his mother, and her throat tightened. She closed her eyes.

But she opened them just moments later when she heard harsh voices she didn’t recognize; people from out of town. She heard an equally cutting, but pained voice respond. It had been six years, but she would recognize that voice even if she’d never heard it. Sentry.

In a single moment, it didn’t matter that the last time she’d seen him she’d ruined the best thing she’d ever had. It didn’t matter that he’d probably do the same to her what she had done to him the moment he saw her. This was his mother’s funeral. No matter what Sentry might have done, there was no one on this earth who had the right to raise his voice against him. Not today. Not here. And certainly not in the wilting presence of a woman who had never risen her voice in her life. Not in anger.

Hadena wove her way through the black-shrouded mourners to stand behind the closest, and most remote, friend she’d ever had and destroyed. By the time she got there, of course, the people who had been desecrating his mother’s memory had already moved on. Way to sweep in and rescue a one-time friend, Had, she mentally complimented herself with a tired sigh. Now that the danger, the enemy, had moved away, the temptation to slink back to her safe place behind everyone else she doubted he even wanted to see was stronger than the temptation not to watch one of her beloved charges die, to somehow save the poor creature that couldn’t save itself. But the second she turned away she knew she had to stop. She’d heard him turn, the heels of his boots breaking frozen blades of grass and dislodging chunks of sod. He’d seen her.

Hadena Erynnis Sonoran (22yrs, D10)
Astor Blue Yellowfin (16yrs, D4)

Eastern Orange
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"I'm Scandinavian, God dammit. We love to be naked!"

Burning Bridges [Ena] Jan 14, 2012 23:27:50 GMT -5

Post by Eastern Orange on Jan 14, 2012 23:27:50 GMT -5

The moment my eyes alight on the girl, I knew without a doubt who it was. Her name rushed to my lips, yearning to be shouted; they hadn’t said her name for years, and they missed the shape of it. I struggled, wrestled, fought with myself… I didn’t want to open that six year old wound that had barely begun to heal. In the end, my lips won out. “Hadena?” I say incredulously. Even after all these years, her name was as familiar to me as my own. “What…What are you doing here?” All at once I was a sixteen year old kid again, in love with my best friend who didn’t love me back.

And then I remembered the stinging sensation left on my face after she slapped me. And I remembered that I am no longer that boy.

I steeled myself, anticipating a less than savory reunion. “You shouldn’t be here.” I hear myself say. It doesn’t sound like me; too much pain, and not enough indifference for it to be my voice. “She got worse after you left.” I state, like it’s a fact, but really I’m accusing her. I need someone to blame that isn’t me, and currently she is the only one left standing on the hill, so it falls to her to be my scapegoat.

I try to ignore the fact that I had once loved this girl. How I would have done anything for her, back in the day. Looking back, I see how selfish I was for kissing her, and I often wonder how our friendship would have turned out if I had had more tact. It probably would have just ended a different way... sooner or later, everyone leaves.

Still, it makes me sick to think how I'm going to treat her, because she is just like everyone else, and I treat everyone the same: like shit. I'm not looking forward to it, like I usually do.

Ena Mena Mina Mo
Hunter

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last seen May 20, 2012 9:37:20 GMT -5

The late mouse gets the cheese.

Burning Bridges [Ena] Jan 14, 2012 23:43:42 GMT -5

Post by Ena Mena Mina Mo on Jan 14, 2012 23:43:42 GMT -5

The way he says my name, it hurts. I can hear that he didn't expect me to be here. But whyever wouldn't I be? I spent so much time over at their house....they were my family, too. She was my mother, too. I had a lucky childhood, I suppose, in that unlike most children I had two sets of parents I could run to if I ever needed something. I didn't know Sentry's father as well as his mother, but I knew him well enough to hug him every time I saw him. And Sentry didn't expect me to be here? Why not? She was my mother too. Wasn't she? "What are you doing here?"

I blink. "The same thing everyone else is, Sentry." I bite the inside of my lip, wonder if perhaps I shouldn't have used his nickname. Well, it's not like I can change what I said now. My eyes flick past his shoulder to the people who yelled at him. "Well, what people are supposed to be doing, anyway." Supposed to be doing. Paying respects. Not paying pettiness and prejudice. Don't people respect the dead anymore? Don't they respect the living they have to spend the rest of their lives with? I guess not. Well, there goes the world, we're doomed. There's nothing left for any of us here if we can't respect that which makes us all value breathing--the fact that you only get to do it for a limited time.

His back seemed to straighten, and do I imagine the hardening of his face, the cooling of his warm eyes, or do they truly start to frost over? In this cold, would I even be surprised? We both radiate chill. "You shouldn't be here," he says. My throat freezes too. "She got worse after you left."

It burns. "I never left," I snarl, my voice harder than it should be to a man who just lost to death the person who made him live. I try to temper the sudden rage--I've never been good at defending myself on topics that I care about. If he'd accused me of taking a knife and plunging it into the throat of one of my few neighbors, I wouldn't have minded. I don't care about them. But I cared about her. Still do. How couldn't I? She was the only one who didn't hold against me the fact of her son. Ironic. Well irony makes the breezes blow and the rivers run, so I struggle to swallow the pain of his accusation and smooth the fury from my face. Masks, these are good. They protect me from those who would say things that aren't true.

I draw my white, freezing fingers from inside the relative but scarce warmth of my thin pocket, the thumb-sized, unfinished dream catcher dangling by my thumb by a thin leather cord. "I was there every day I could be, Sentry," I say quietly, though the anger is still warming my voice. Without showing him what's in my hand, I crouch and lay it on the overturned sod and snow of where she was buried without me because I was late. By now we're the only ones here, which makes for an easy, cowardly exit. Oh well. We'll have to do with proud, then. "You're the one who left town." I turn and walk away, hands fisted in my pockets where he can't see them shake.

Hadena Erynnis Sonoran (22yrs, D10)
Astor Blue Yellowfin (16yrs, D4)

Eastern Orange
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Burning Bridges [Ena] Jan 15, 2012 0:16:47 GMT -5

Post by Eastern Orange on Jan 15, 2012 0:16:47 GMT -5

I grit my teeth at Hadena's retreating back. "Oh yea. You where there alright," I yelled after her, sarcastically. "I must have imagined all those times she asked for you, and I had to tell her that you were done having friends. That you were done with me." I hadn't meant to say that last part, it was a bit to personal. I had said it with such bitterness that it hinted at what Hadena's rejection had done to me.

"You did leave. You cut me and my mother out of your life so easily. One day we were like family, and the next you were pushing me away with everything you had." I didn't want to chase after her, but I couldn't stop my feet from taking a few steps down the hill toward her. "You don't know what it was like, you wouldn't because you weren't there. Mother couldn't even get out of bed most days, and I couldn't force myself to be her bright little boy anymore because I -" I cut myself off. I had been about to say 'because I no longer had you to help me' but there was no way I was letting her know that.

It had been easy dealing with my mother's depression when I had had Hadena with me. She had staved of my own depression. She made my life bright, and happy. And then she left. I no longer had that balance of happiness brought by Hadena, and sadness given off by my mother. All I had was the dark emotions, and they soon took me over as they had taken over my mother. I was suffocating in grief, and my mother saw that. She had been the one who told me to leave for the city. And I'm sad to admit, that I had been relieved when she did. I wouldn't have gone if she hadn't told me to.

Ena Mena Mina Mo
Hunter

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last seen May 20, 2012 9:37:20 GMT -5

The late mouse gets the cheese.

Burning Bridges [Ena] Jan 15, 2012 0:30:22 GMT -5

Post by Ena Mena Mina Mo on Jan 15, 2012 0:30:22 GMT -5

"I must have imagined all those times she asked for you, and I had to tell her that you were done having friends. That you were done with me."

I stop. God, I need to find better ways to outlet my anger. Because he isn't the target I'm actually aiming for, but lord forbid he's the one I'm going to hit. I can feel my eyes warming with tears I'd rather bleed than shed. "Done?" Even I can't think up a witty and cutting remark to snap back at him. That sucks.

"You cut me and my mother out of your life so easily."

But this I can respond to. "Easy?" I hiss, stomping back up the hill to him. "Just what makes you think of ease when someone walks away? What, just because you can't see their face you assume that it's smirking? When did you get so cynical?" Better question: When did I? But I don't say that. "You can't just assume that nothing you can't see yourself doesn't exist. Why do you think the floor was always swept? Why do you think dinner was always burned? She was tired, Sentry, and you know I can't cook." An entire train wreck of profanity steams through my ears and skull as I realize what I've just done: admitted that I made dinner for him most of the nights he wasn't there and able to make it for himself before dark. When he had to work late. Because that little tidbit doesn't make me look desperate and obsessed at all....

"Mother couldn't even get out of bed most days, and I couldn't force myself to be her bright little boy anymore because I -"

I pick up where he left of. "Because you what? Hated me too much to do it? Well join the club, I made it myself. And I know I deserve that, Sent, but what the hell makes you think that this is the time and place for childhood insults?" They're not childish; they're the strangled pleas and accusations of two adults who learned to hate each other because they both cared too much to cause the other one pain. The Sentry I know would have tried again, would have laughed off the fact that I so quickly shoved him away. But the Hadena I used to know and who died that day wouldn't let him. He's right; I spent everything I had avoiding him. I never gave him the chance to mend things, and goodness knows I'd never do it myself.

Hadena Erynnis Sonoran (22yrs, D10)
Astor Blue Yellowfin (16yrs, D4)

Eastern Orange
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Burning Bridges [Ena] Jan 15, 2012 21:57:21 GMT -5

Post by Eastern Orange on Jan 15, 2012 21:57:21 GMT -5

I furrow my brows at her in confusion. “What the hell are you even talking about? Hating you? Yea, I hated you, I still do, but that isn’t why I left. Do you really think that had anything to do with you. When did I get so cynical?! Probably around the same time you got so self-absorbed.” I’m surprised at the level of animosity that is bubbling under my voice. I knew that I was mad at Hadena, but I never realized how mad. Hey, I guess that’s what six years of unresolved feelings and a broken heart will do to you.

“I understand why you didn’t come around. I don’t blame you for that.” I can’t quite meet her eyes as I remember the ill-timed kiss, and the confusion of feeling so happy and then so unbelievably sad and betrayed in the span of a few seconds. “But what you apparently don’t realize is that in punishing me, you were punishing her too. That’s what I blame you for.” I point to the upturned soil. “She loved you like a daughter. Did she ever tell you what ever happened to her first daughter? She died when she was just a baby.” I flinch at the sudden pain in my heart. It took me by surprise, as I didn’t think I’d be able to feel remorse for one I had never met. But I did.

“I can only imagine how happy she was to find a daughter in you, because lord knows that woman needed a little girl to fawn over, dress up, and speak about girl things with. She couldn’t do that with a son, now could she?” And it’s back again; that bitterness. I always hated that I had never been enough for my mother, but I had tried my best to never be jealous of Hadena. But right now, I let that ugly emotion wash through me. “You took that away from her, and it was like losing another child all over again. That’s what sent her tumbling into a dark place, where I couldn’t reach her. Do you know what that did to me? Seeing my mother suffering so much, and not being able to do shit about it? To know that it wasn’t enough for her to have one son who would do anything for her. It absolutely killed me, and pretty soon I was consumed by the same demons that plagued her.” If Hadena thought I was bad now, she would completely loose her shit over what I was like then. I was just as depressed as mother. How could I not be? I didn’t have anyone other than my family and Hadena, and she left. So I was essentially alone.

I give a frustrated sigh and run a hand through my hair. “Forget it.” I grumble, turning my back to her. “Why am I trying to justify myself to you, you don’t care. And one last thing. Don’t call me Sentry.” Okay, so maybe I lied when I said I wasn’t petty.

Ena Mena Mina Mo
Hunter

76 POSTS
last seen May 20, 2012 9:37:20 GMT -5

The late mouse gets the cheese.

Burning Bridges [Ena] Jan 15, 2012 22:19:18 GMT -5

Post by Ena Mena Mina Mo on Jan 15, 2012 22:19:18 GMT -5

"Probably around the same time you got so self-absorbed.”

Yeah, I think. So self-absorbed that, even though I hate to admit it, when she was too tired to get up, I made you dinner. And that was at least three nights out of the week when it got hear the end.... When she got near the end.... But it's another word that catches like a rusted fish hook against my chapped skin. My hands finally come out of their hiding place so I can gesticulate to underline what I'm saying. "Punishing? Really? That's how you see it? Jeez, you never listen to people, do you? I don't have--and never did have--a reason to punish you. I was just....god I was confused, all right? What did you expect me to do? Pretend like it never happened? I panicked and took off and could never bring myself to come back and ask you what happened, why it happened. But your mother wasn't involved in our problems, so why would I run away from her?" Somehow I doubt my logic will have any effect on him, but hey, I did my best. I don't talk about feelings. Not as a general rule, but as an irrefutable one.

As his angered, purposefully ignorant speech turns to how much she'd wanted a daughter, what had happened to hers, and how much I'd meant to the kind woman, I can feel my fists hardening again, tears of rage--because of how he's making a point to upset me and it's working, as it always does when Sentry is the one saying the words--warming my eyes again. Why? Why does he keep doing this? Keep inflicting these tiny wounds only to wedge salted snow into them again and again?

My voice is shaking as I speak over the last of his words, quickly losing that ice-carved mask I wear to deal with everyone else in this world. "I never took anything away from her, Sentry, I never took anything!" Then his words override mine in retaliation.

"You don't care."

He's about to walk away. Just like I did to him, only this time the receiver of the other friend's back isn't going to stand by and watch it happen. She isn't going to just accept that this is the end. With a short cry of rage, I throw myself at him, red chafed hands stretching out to shove him in the backs of his shoulders. "Don't you dare say that I never cared, Sentry. Or if you don't like that, maybe I should just go back to Nell. Would you prefer that, Sentinel?" I push him again. "If I don't care then why the hell are you still so capable of making me so damned angry when no one else can anymore? Why do you think you're the only one who can do it?" If I start to cry now, I swear to whatever dead deity whose ghost haunts this world, I will surely start to tear off my own skin. Maybe when I'm dead it can keep someone else warmer than it ever kept me when I was alive.

Last Edit: Jan 15, 2012 22:20:05 GMT -5 by Ena Mena Mina Mo

Hadena Erynnis Sonoran (22yrs, D10)
Astor Blue Yellowfin (16yrs, D4)

Eastern Orange
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"I'm Scandinavian, God dammit. We love to be naked!"

Burning Bridges [Ena] Jan 15, 2012 23:04:36 GMT -5

Post by Eastern Orange on Jan 15, 2012 23:04:36 GMT -5

I whip around and grab her wrists just as she tries to shove me again. I’m bigger and stronger than her; it’s easy for me to ward off the attack. “Resorting to violence, again are we?” I snort, and give her my most cruel smile. I don’t let go of wrists, instead I yank her forward and shove my face in hers so that our breath mingles. “And I’d appreciate it,” I say quietly, dangerously. “if you wouldn’t say may name at all, Hadena.” I snarl out her name, like a curse. “You have no reason to be talking to me. We haven’t seen each other in six years, and honestly, that is definitely not long enough.” I have no clue why I’m being so unnecessary cruel to her, but it’s really hard to stop now that I’ve started.

Really, I just miss my mom. Everyone needs to leave me alone so I can grieve in peace.

I cock my head, and study her face, inches from mine. I think about kissing her again, mostly to get a raise out of her, and to see if I still had feelings for her. But I’m not that evil. “I don’t get you.” I finally say after stretch of silence. “You are telling me that you care? About what? Me? My mother? Because you certainly don’t act like it. Again, I ask you: what are you here?” I narrow my eyes at her, searching for some ulterior motive.

Ena Mena Mina Mo
Hunter

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last seen May 20, 2012 9:37:20 GMT -5

The late mouse gets the cheese.

Burning Bridges [Ena] Jan 15, 2012 23:21:31 GMT -5

Post by Ena Mena Mina Mo on Jan 15, 2012 23:21:31 GMT -5

His larger hands lock around the cold skin of my wrists and I stumble as my momentum is deflected. ”Resorting to violence….” The look on his face is vicious, feral, and utterly unrecognizable. I find myself pulling away out of shock for this stranger just as he jerks me closer. I can feel his heated breath on my cheeks as he softly snarls. Not at all? Well what am I supposed to call him, then? Or does this mean what I now fear, that he just never wants me to speak to him again…. My strangely miserable guess is the second.

Sentinel’s face tilts as though he’s examining my face, my eyes, looking for the very things I’ve already given him—answers. But he just doesn’t believe them. It would seem that any word spoken from my mouth automatically warrants scrutiny and derision, now. We used to never question each other, Sentry and I. Which one of us messed that up? ”I don’t get you.” Well that goes both ways, Sentry. I don’t think I know you anymore, either. Where is the happy, cheerily derisive boy I used to poke fun at just to see if you would react, which you never did? Who killed you? Where did you go? “You are telling me that you care? …. Why are you here?”

My throat is dry as I try to respond, head craned back to see him. Despite how he appears to only shave once a week, I can still see the defined angle of his jawline beneath the scruff. ”S—I--, you know I never did anything I didn’t want to do. I wanted to come…. Whether you believe me or not, I loved her too.” I can sense that he’s about to spit some retort so I speak up, louder, trying to make me hear me this time. ”No, just listen to me! Look under the head of her bed—there’s a box, open it. You’ll understand—“ But maybe he won’t. Maybe he’ll never understand anymore.

I can’t move my hands from where he’s immobilized them by the wrists. No longer red, they’re gradually turning white. Never a good sign, but since when have I listened to those? After the last time I saw Sentry, my mother said I should have seen the signs long before this. But if I ever did, I never listened to them, either. Even so, I long to flex the fingers, to see the comforting flow of blood beneath the rough, abused skin. I should never have neglected to remember my gloves. But I’m terrified that if I move even my fingertips, he’ll disappear again. Even though I was equally terrified just minutes ago to see him at all again, now all I can remember is how those six years without him were hell.

Last Edit: Jan 16, 2012 15:22:09 GMT -5 by Ena Mena Mina Mo

Hadena Erynnis Sonoran (22yrs, D10)
Astor Blue Yellowfin (16yrs, D4)

Eastern Orange
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527 POSTS
last seen Apr 19, 2019 19:32:23 GMT -5

"I'm Scandinavian, God dammit. We love to be naked!"

Burning Bridges [Ena] Jan 16, 2012 15:37:49 GMT -5

Post by Eastern Orange on Jan 16, 2012 15:37:49 GMT -5

“Box?” I repeat, confused once more. “What does a box have to do with anything?” I feel a spark of annoyance, but I decide to let it go. If Hadena wants to be cryptic, fine. What the fuck ever. I’m absolutely sick of this conversation. I was sick of it before it even started. I don’t even know what we are arguing about anymore, or why we are still arguing. How did it even come to this?

Oh yea. Hadena suddenly showed up to my mom’s funeral after six years of diddlysquat from her. Is that what I’m mad about? She only showed up after my mother was dead. She is here for her, and not me. I straighten up so I am no longer hovering in her face, but I don’t let go of her wrists. Instead I wrap my hands around her cold fingers. “You never remember to wear your gloves.” I say quietly. I let her hands go, and dig my gloves out of my pockets. I hold them out for her to take. “The same old, Hadena.” I whisper, staring at her and wondering if she were, indeed, the same girl I used to know. “You can take your moment to say goodbye.” I nod over to my mother’s grave, and step away.

I don’t wait around. I just leave. I couldn’t get down that hill fast enough. Back in my house, I don’t feel any better. I go to my mother’s room, and look under her bed. I pull out a faded blue box, and hold it in my lap, but I don’t open it.

Ena Mena Mina Mo
Hunter

76 POSTS
last seen May 20, 2012 9:37:20 GMT -5

The late mouse gets the cheese.

Burning Bridges [Ena] Jan 16, 2012 20:02:19 GMT -5

Post by Ena Mena Mina Mo on Jan 16, 2012 20:02:19 GMT -5

A box has to do with everything,I think to myself, but don’t dare to say it. Your mother is buried in one, and the proof that I always cared is buried in another hiding under her bead. It’s obvious he’s fed up with me already—well, we always did know how to set each other off—but I know if I tried to explain now he wouldn’t listen. Wouldn’t understand. But the contents of that box mean and explain both a lot and a little. I’d prefer to think about the lot, about the time—not obvious at first—spent making all those tiny dream catchers that she took down when Sentry came home, not wanting him to see them and be sad. Or angry. Each one is somehow distinguished from all of its sisters and brothers; some are made of grass, some the hairs from a horse’s mane, some from dandelion stems or hawthorn needles or woven from flowers with a moth’s wing caught in the netting in the center of the circle for decoration. There are dozens upon dozens of those, some so old they’ve started to fall apart and turn to dust in the bottom of the box. But pressed between browned slips of dry paper are also crimson fall leaves and golden ones, the bright faces of daisies and goldenrod flowers, and a few butterfly wings I’ve found while wandering the hills. I never killed the butterflies—she made me promise twice that the lovely things were already gone once I’d found them and brought them back for her. Scattered at the very bottom of the box are a few sparkling, blue stones—the ones I knew she always valued most—and a few more scraps of paper. Each one has a time and a smile written on it. My hurried, arrogant handwriting: Filled the water trough, 6am; wasp nest starting under northward eave, careful; be over at eight tonight, bringing apples; ewe fourteen is limping, watch her. I couldn’t every day, but I always dropped by in the morning after milking the goats if I could. If I saw that something was wrong or I was able to help lighten some of the load, I always mentioned the caution or let them know that they wouldn’t have to break the ice in the water trough until noon. Small things. All I’d ever been good at, was the little, insignificant, inconsequential things.

This was the little that I would always be ashamed of. Where someone requires the smallest hand of help, just let me know and if I care, I’ll do all you need to be done. But when necessity requires larger actions, greater commitments, don’t even look my way because I won’t be there anymore. I’ll have already gone and you may never see me again. Just like, until this day, Sentry never saw me again.

Some of the tension lining his posture like iron rods straining almost through his skin eases, and slowly Sentinel stands straight. He’s still tightly—though not as much to restrain—gripping my wrists, but then that grip adjusts to clasp around my stiff fingers. He’s right, though. For as long as I can remember, he’s been haranguing me about wearing gloves. Part of my forgetfulness is simply that—that I’ve forgotten—but some of it is that I honestly don’t like wearing gloves or mittens. They’re restrictive and deaden any possible finer sensation I might need later on. But my mind is like a winter mist as his large gloves appear in her chapped hands, which are numbed for more than one reason now. ”The same old Hadena,” he murmurs, eyes coming to meet mine again.

And then he’s gone, just as I feared, but neither of us left screaming or bleeding, so perhaps we’re not as bad off as I feared we might have.

I don’t follow him immediately. I’m a skilled procrastinator, and honestly too shaken up right now to be of any coherent help, if I can be of any help anyway. So I slide my smaller hands into the spacious gloves and clomp over to the fresh grave and sit down beside it. Just like when I sat next to her bed. The single dream catcher, unfinished and woven out of scraps of wool that I dyed red with defrosted berries, with a few small, pitted oak galls dangling from strings at the bottom of it, looks painfully simple and childish. I can draw neither a circle nor a straight line, so I remove the warm gloves and set them aside, rising up onto my knees. My hands sting and ache so deeply that the tears finally spring to my eyes as I press my hands around the edges of her grave, leaving flowery, lacy patterns in the snow all around it. I make another flower shape over her heart and around her head. After that, still procrastinating, I take up the gloves again and trot home. He’s wrong. I do care. I always did. Stuffed in a cardboard box underneath my own bed is a knitted red scarf of Sentry’s that he left at my house the day Acmon died. I never mustered up the courage to return it to him until this day.

About ten minutes later I’d made it back to his house. I come in the back door without thinking, out of habit, since his parents finally broke me of the habit of knocking about three years ago.

Hadena Erynnis Sonoran (22yrs, D10)
Astor Blue Yellowfin (16yrs, D4)

Eastern Orange
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"I'm Scandinavian, God dammit. We love to be naked!"

Burning Bridges [Ena] Jan 16, 2012 21:23:13 GMT -5

Post by Eastern Orange on Jan 16, 2012 21:23:13 GMT -5

Countless dream catchers are spread on the floor all around me, each one unique and obviously made with care. I look at them mutely, amazed at the number and variety of them. Various strips of paper are scattered among them, along with bits of blue rock. I pick up one of the scraps, and flip it over. I immediately recognize the scribbled words as Hadena’s. ‘First frost this morning, bundle up!’ I pick up another one, my hand slightly shaking. ‘I’ll bring over some extra goat milk later.” I drop the paper and pick up another, and another, and another. All of them hold reminders, or advisories, or greetings. With each one that I read, my movements become more hurried and desperate, and my hands shake more violently.

Hadena took care of my family, while I went and hid in the city. I feel like I’m going to throw up.

I stand up and look at hundreds of tiny tokens that symbolized the relationship between Hadena and my mother; a relationship that I never guessed the scope of. My vision blurred, and for a second I really thought that I was going to vomit all over the place. But the feeling passed, and instead, I was consumed by a hodgepodge of rage, despair, and guilt. An impulse to smash everything runs through me, but before I can carry it out, I run from the room. I careen headfirst into Hadena, who I didn’t hear come in, and essentially tackle her to the ground. Instinctually, I wrapped my arms around her mid-fall, so I took the brunt of the fall.

Pain slowly radiates through my shoulder, and my skull where is cracked against the hardwood floor. “Shit, where the fuck did you come from?” I growl, my head injury just worsened my mood, and seeing as Hadena was the catalyst for my mood in the first place, seeing her didn’t help either. I wasn’t even mad at her. But, seeing her reminded me that I was a terrible son, and a weak person.

Ena Mena Mina Mo
Hunter

76 POSTS
last seen May 20, 2012 9:37:20 GMT -5

The late mouse gets the cheese.

Burning Bridges [Ena] Jan 16, 2012 21:58:23 GMT -5

Post by Ena Mena Mina Mo on Jan 16, 2012 21:58:23 GMT -5

I closed the door quietly behind me, honestly considering going back out just to knock and make it look like Sentry had a choice in whether or not I came in. This house was as much mine as it was his, if we were judging by time spent within its protective, if thin, walls. I thought I was being quiet, though perhaps that wasn’t my best instinct, because the very moment I went to tread past her room, a person much taller than I came lurching out of it. I cried out in surprise as he fell into me, my knees buckled, and we both toppled to the ground in less time than it took to rope a calf. I blinked up at the ceiling, seeing it at a strange angle now, and groaned. Sentry’s arms had taken most of the fall, so I wasn’t hurt at all, just a bit surprised. ”What was that for, Sent?” I grumbled, more perplexed than anything else, though by this time I’d figured out that he hadn’t expected me to be there. Sentry and I were never exactly the type to be gentle with each other though. Almost every interaction we had involved a bruise to someone somewhere. I guess it was almost a tradition, and those accursed things were hard to break, apparently.

I blink again and the realization that we’re tangled up on the floor together strikes me the same way the floor hit my ass. I sit up as Sentry rolls over, also realizing that he’s asked me a question. I look over at him. ”What? I came over because—Sentry, your head!” Have I mentioned that I don’t like blood? When it’s on a goat, a kid, or an errant fox I had to kill to protect my flock, it’s just another color on the skin of the world. But when it’s on a person, a human being, especially one I don’t like to admit that I care about, I especially dislike it. It’s like the stuff bites. Even if you think you never touch the person, the second you get home you realize it’s all over your hands and all of a sudden it looks like their bleeding was your fault. But now there’s a gash over his left eyebrow and a small smear of it on the unevenly cut corner of one of the floorboards. I kick his legs off mine and rush to the kitchen, where I know there are spare bandages kept, and scissors. And a clean washcloth in the drawer beneath them. I wet the washcloth and bring a dry one as well, the bandages and scissors also coming with me. I fall to my knees next to him.

”Stop moving, nimrod,” I chastise, trying to be mean because it’s the only thing that somewhat hides my automatic desire to run in the other direction because of the crimson streak now dripping down his temple toward his hair. Not his hair…. I plant one hand on the uninjured side of his forehead like a foot against a criminal’s neck, refusing him the right to turn his own big head, and carefully, gingerly begin to wipe at the cut. The stuff that leaked down his face I swipe up first so it won’t crust over in his dark hair, but I don’t want to hurt him when getting the rest of it off the gash. ”What’d you go grabbing me for?” I demand next, irritated at myself because I know showing this kind of weakness around blood is unforgivable and, well, pathetic. Weak. Just like I refuse to be. ”Think about yourself for once, you’ll thank yourself for it.” Idiot. I continue dabbing gently around the smirk rent into his forehead, lower lip caught worriedly behind my teeth, the only expression of concern that slips through my defensive pretense of The Girl Who Doesn’t Care. Ever.

His grimace when I nudge his shoulder makes me frown. ”This too? What a warm homecoming your floor has decided to give you.” Remembering his question I never answered, I do my best to do so. Even before I open my mouth I know it won’t be a neat, pretty answer. I don’t do pretty. I do quick and dirty and get off my lawn you pervert. ”Um, well, I thought maybe I should? People are supposed to hang around and annoy you and stuff your face with food after funerals, but if I tried to feed you you’d probably die from unintended food poisoning so I opted to annoy you instead, since that certainly comes more naturally for me. Stay there.” Finishing with cleaning off the cut-up area, I throw the dry towel over his face so he can keep it from bleeding any more and go to the back door again for snow, all the while resenting myself for the inhibiting habit to babble when I’m uncomfortable, which doesn’t happen much. Never, really. Or almost never…. I stoop to fill the washcloth with snow for his shoulder, realize it’s wet and bloody, and, in a huff, stomp back into the house, marching right over his prone form blocking the hallway as I rinse it out in the sink and go back out, muttering self-deprecating remarks all the while. Then I crouch back down beside him and wedge the snow pack through the collar of his coat and shirt so it can lay against his skin at the point of his shoulder, bonier than I remember, but also stiffer, stronger. Peculiar and unfamiliar. Without speaking this time, because I know I’d just regret opening my mouth now, I firmly hold the dry towel to his forehead one-handed as I unroll lengths of bandaging. When I realize I’m probably only bruising the back of his head this way, I shift to prop his head on the inside of my calf and begin struggling with the scissors. Dull as a mule, these shears. I should have remembered to sharpen these when I did the knives…. Alas. Lord knows I’m not perfect. ”Keep holding this here,” I instruct him as I wrestle with the strip of fabric and the blunt scissors. Eventually I do manage to cut the bandages, but only because I gnawed on them first, and then I quickly and tightly wind them around and around his head, over a folded square to start over the cut, to maintain pressure on it. Heads bleed like rivers run, I swear. You’d think they wouldn’t, to protect the survival of humanity, but hey, who ever said humans were smart? Finally, I sit back with a sigh, thumping my head loudly on the wall. ”You had to bleed,” I gripe, being rather unfair with him, I know. His head is still resting on my leg.

Last Edit: Jan 16, 2012 21:59:32 GMT -5 by Ena Mena Mina Mo

Hadena Erynnis Sonoran (22yrs, D10)
Astor Blue Yellowfin (16yrs, D4)

Eastern Orange
Career Tribute

[M:-100]

527 POSTS
last seen Apr 19, 2019 19:32:23 GMT -5

"I'm Scandinavian, God dammit. We love to be naked!"

Burning Bridges [Ena] Jan 16, 2012 22:45:09 GMT -5

Post by Eastern Orange on Jan 16, 2012 22:45:09 GMT -5

“I didn’t mean to.” I snort, letting her push me off of her. I tumble to my back, and look up at the ceiling, unmoving. “You’re the one breaking and entering. A man has a right to run through his house as he wishes. It’s your fault for getting in the way.” I feel all my anger slowly drain away, leaving me with just the feeling of guilt and sadness. In other words, leaving me feeling depressed.

I don’t pay attention as Hadena rifles through the house, and comes back to clean up my wound. I listen to her ramble, and almost have to smile at the memories it brings back from our childhood. She leaves, and I think she left for good, but she comes back and shoves something cold against my shoulder. I flinch at the sudden feeling, but I say nothing, just continue to stare at the ceiling, even when she positions my head on her leg.

I tried not to feel too emasculated. I mean, it’s Hadena. She was always taking care of me, and it had never bothered me before. One time, we were swimming in the river and I lost my footing on a slippery rock, and broke my leg. It also inflicted a rather nasty gash that ran down the length of my calf. Hadena had swooned at it, but she bandaged it for me anyway. She helped get me home, and then stayed with me all summer while my leg healed. She could have gone out and played with the other kids, but she chose to stay in with me. In fact, that was just a few months before her brother died, and our friendship ended.

But that was when I was a kid. I’m a grown ass man now, and I can’t even take care of myself. ”You had to bleed.” Her voice wakes me from my reverie, and I realize that she is done tending to me. I sit up, and scoot away from her. “Sorry, I’ll try to keep my bodily fluids inside next time a wound myself.” I say tiredly. “Listen, Hadena. I know you said you’re here to annoy me, but I’ve had a long day. Can’t we just say you did? I have… I have a lot to think about.” Yea, like how I was in the city while my mom was stuck in this depressing place being taken care of by the neighbor girl who stopped talking to me because I kissed her.

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Post by Eastern Orange on Jan 14, 2012 22:37:30 GMT -5

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Post by Ena Mena Mina Mo on Jan 16, 2012 20:02:19 GMT -5

Post by Eastern Orange on Jan 16, 2012 21:23:13 GMT -5

Post by Ena Mena Mina Mo on Jan 16, 2012 21:58:23 GMT -5

Post by Eastern Orange on Jan 16, 2012 22:45:09 GMT -5