The Sibling Unheard [meg]

Wrapped tight in green cloth, the district’s main buildings let the wind wrap around their tired bodies, like great ships that had weathered one to many a storm. Although some crumbled in places, or were missing walls or windows, they still held their strength, knowing that it was their job to be the parent figures to the city, especially now, in this time of crisis. So many of their child-buildings had been amputated and disabled by the earthquake, or had even died. These sky scrapers, although bruised and battered and morning themselves, had a district’s reputation and livelihood to uphold.

Nora weaved in between them, walking with a purpose but still taking time to marvel at the sheer strength of these buildings. Their metal skeletons held thousands of tonnes of damaged materials, and yet still they stood, so much better than Nora’s own little house had. She liked to think of herself as one of these buildings. Although she dragged around immeasurable weights of damage, she hoped that she still appeared strong. Her body felt now like it had strength, and so for the first time in her physical state matched her mental.

As she left the center of town, the buildings were not so strong. Many were missing sides, rooves, or had crumbled under the earthquakes pressure. Most of her district had experienced an earthquake a matter of months before, but Ilanora had experienced two- the one that collapsed her house and so killed her mother, and the one that was not so visible, the one that instead of taking from her, gave to her. It was the earthquake that told that her life had been a lie, that she had never been sick, that her seemingly-infinite illness had been her body objecting to the poison her mother had subjected her to day after day.

Soon, she was back in her old neighbourhood. Had she been born to a different mother, she would have grazed her knees on this tarmac playing street soccer, had her first kiss under that old oak tree. Instead, she had watched the action from her sick-bed, inventing alternate realities in her head where she was brawny and touch and had scars on her elbows and scabs on her shins. Her skin was flawlessly smooth, one part of her body that had always been healthy.

She found the rubble of her house. It was unrecognisable, a mass of shades of grey. It was amazing, something that everyone commented on, how little was salvageable from the ruined houses. They were just bricks and cement, no longer capable of supporting anyone but still supporting so many emotions. The dust of a lifetime of inhabitancy stuck to Nora’s worn shoes, and she wondered if the grit had come from her toys, her clothes, from her mothers’ dead body. It had been a closed-coffin funeral, after all. Nora had no idea of how much of her mother’s body had actually been excavated.

One foot was placed carefully after the other until Nora found where she estimated her room had been. Quietly, she started to lift bricks away, hoping to find something, anything, that might be of significance to her. It almost felt now as if the life that she had in this house had not been real, had been some other imaginary game that she had played. She wanted something to prove herself wrong.

A lick of colour caught her attention out of the corner of her eye. Amongst the grey of the rubble and the grey of the sky, it was a something out of a storybook, something far too bright to be found in a mourning district, in a dead house. With no respect for the deceased building, Nora scrambled over the patches that were once ceiling and tile, not caring for the rock which bit at her palms. She wrapped her slender fingers around the swirls she had spotted through the wreckage, and pulled out a bouquet of flowers. Irises. Her favourite.

Mum.

Her mind flicked through a hundred hospital beds, each with a bunch of irises beside them. There was no better feeling when she was sick than her mother coming through the door with a fresh bunch of purple. Each petal would be examined for impurities, so that the only flowers allowed to stay in her sick room were the healthiest. She liked to watch them wither and die, because it showed her that even the most beautiful of things became ill, eventually; died, eventually.

No. Of course it had not been her mother who had placed the flowers amongst the wreckage. Her mother was dead, for Christ’s sake. And even if she had not have been, she was the one who had put Nora in those hospital rooms in the first place. She was the one who had made her that wilted iris, rotting in its pretty vase filled with stagnant water. If it were not for her, Ilanora could have fed on healthy soil and bloomed in the most beautiful of forests. Instead, she had stayed a bud, too lacking in nutrients to be able to even unfurl a petal.

But, as it hadn’t been her mother to leave the flowers, who could it have been? Had there been an estranged uncle that she had not known about? An ex-boyfriend from her mother’s teenage years? A caring doctor of Ilanora’s who had not been updated on the story? Or perhaps… but, no, he didn’t care that she was dead. Although, perhaps it had been her father. If that was all the effort that he could go too to contact her, then Nora still didn’t want to see him, just as she did not want to see her mother. And yet, when for a second she had thought that her mother had thoughtfully left those flowers there for her, she had been so happy. The moment had been fleeting, but, despite all the pain, there was a part of her that truly wanted to be looked after once again by her mum.

Thoughts printed themselves over the wreckage as she sat, holding the flowers so tight in one hand that her knuckles were paling. She didn’t even notice the boy until he was looming over her, apologising for knocking into her. Leaping to her feet, she was ever the one to maintain her manners.

“No, I’m sorry, it was my fault entirely,” she said, although it clearly wasn’t. “May I ask what you’re doing here?”