the mother we {share} [karmichael twins]
Mar 23, 2015 18:30:55 GMT -5
Post by rook on Mar 23, 2015 18:30:55 GMT -5
j a n o
never took your side
never cursed your name
i keep my lips shut tight
until you goThe only fire in my life is nothing more than a flicker, dwindling and fragile. I sit high above daisy cutting breezes and the curious noses of hermit mammals sniffing their way out of damp holes. Like the forest sentinel, I stand and watch as life passes by. Not man-made and compacted, but life as life should be: Natural, pure, and free. When you live in woodland sanctuary for over a year, you become a part of the forest. Like roots have sprouted from your feet and sunk their wooden teeth deep into the earth. Attachment. Tch. I don't think I could ever leave this place, even now. Even when they threaten to have me dragged down from my treetop fortress, and have me watch as they burn it to the ground. I would rather burn with it than be forced to move back in with my bastard drunk father.
The happy sounds of the forest make me sick. It's a sign of living here too long, I think. Whilst I have developed a healthy attachment to nature, it's constant cheery disposition makes me nauseous, and only contrasts against the events of my life. In ways, it makes them worse. I find that to be the case a lot of the time, that seeing things happy only worsens a bad mood. I don't know, it tends to vary. Sometimes I find it therapeutic, and it's a damn sight better than the gray humdrum of modern town life in District Seven. A whole expanse of green on their doorstep and people stay in their square rooms and shut out the world around them. Perhaps I shouldn't judge. My circumstances are extenuating, to say the least. My view of the world much more shaped by fire and whips.
It's been six months since I have seen my sister. Six months since I woke up to an empty treehouse. I spent the morning looking for her whereabouts, and the afternoon on the whipping post. Castor had been arrested for the murder of a Peacekeeper, and sent to the Detention Center to atone for her crimes. Of course, I ran away with her that day. When Ellise was taken from us so tragically. Taken from us-... My hands shake now, even thinking back to that day. Should I repress that memory, when it is such a big part of who I am now? I cannot. To bottle it up and lock it away would be unfair to Ellise. It would be like she never existed, but she did. She was our everything, everything.
I hid Castor, when she was so vulnerable. Hid in shrubs and hollowed out tree trunks. Her shaky breaths on my neck, her violent convulsions, her splitting sobs. She leaned on me, her younger twin, she leaned on me like I was a figure of solidarity, when I was anything but. Rash, reckless. Dragging my sister through the darkness, looking for something, looking for someone, some fucking answer to what the fuck was going on. Why us? Why that day? I spent nearly a year trying to cover our tracks, trying to clear our names so that we could go home. But in the end, it wasn't me who cleared our names, it was Castor. She got caught, and she paid her debt. The white lightning down my back shows I paid mine too. Now it's all fucking done and atoned for, I don't want to go home. This is my home now. This life is all I know.
What do I have to go home to? A dying father who I haven't seen or spoken to in over a year? An empty cot that serves as a reminder that we failed as human beings? No, Castor is all I have now. And even then. Even then. How will I know that the Castor coming home is the same person that was taken from me? My sister is strong. No, she is the strongest person I know. Even before that day, she provided for us. She brought home the money, and the food, and the mother's touch that was voided during our childhood. She had to be strong. Yes, she stumbled. She reacted like any distraught human being would. We got through it, and she was strong. So damn strong. Part of me knows she's got through the past six months with that same resolution.
There is no running water in our treehouse. I have to walk half a mile to the nearest stream every morning to fill up four buckets, which is as much as I can carry, and try to walk back without spilling too much. I miss the days when we had eight buckets a day, but not having Castor around means I only get half as much. Half as much of everything. I'll be glad for that luxury again, as it means I don't have to do two trips on days where I am low on water. I use a bucket to wash myself, and another for boiling - Vegetables, or tea leaves, usually. The other two are used for cleaning, or drinking.
I grab a sponge that was once yellow, now ragged brown, and scrub down my torso with the cold water, using what little soap I have scavenged to get myself somewhat presentable for my sister's homecoming. I shouldn't call it that. It's not a celebration, as much as I will be happy to see her. No doubt she's been through a lot in the past half-year, and none of it good. She won't be in a good mood, if I know her like I think I do. I run the sponge over the scars on my back. They don't hurt like they used to, if at all. My back is like a canyon, with horrible protruding scar tissue fissuring my skin. It's hard for me to ignore whenever my flesh is bare. I dry off and pull a bland gray sweater over myself. Castor doesn't need to know what happened.
I think, under all the anxiety, regret, and self-loathing, I am excited to see my sister again. I've spent too many nights awake wondering what hell she's going through in those cells. Wondering what the Peacekeepers are doing to her. It's human nature to worry, and although that fear for her never left me, I did manage to sleep better when I realized there was nothing I could do to fix things. No amount of reading paperwork and searching for loopholes was going to get my murderer sister out of jail, no more than you can't stop the sun from setting, or the trees from growing.
I do not know what the Detention Center is like. I have heard rumors about town. They say the Peacekeepers are worse than the ones on patrol in the Districts. They say they are hand selected for their brutality. I don't like thinking about it, but as I have found over the months, the things that are hard to think about are hard not to think about because they are hard to think about. Try wrapping your head around that one. I don't expect Castor has missed my philosophical side, although I find that the things I miss most about her are the little things. Like being kicked for sleeping in, or being laughed at for spilling coffee over my lap (which I tend to do more often than is desirable).
The thing is, I don't even know if Castor will come here. Does she still think that after our names have been cleared and that past of our lives is truly behind us, that I would stay in hiding? Hiding. It's not hiding any more. It's just another way of living. She will come. I think she will. This place was more of a home to us than living with Kilbane Karmichael, who wasn't so much of a father, rather a sack of meat who drank himself to sleep and forced us to help with the effects of his cancer. This was in between beating twelve-year-old me, and calling Castor a slut, before she had even started menstruating. They might escort her back to our old house, where that old bastard is. Either way, she'll make her way here eventually. She always does, in the end, even if it takes six months.
I pour a bucket of water into a pan and light the stove, slowly boiling it. I pour in tea leaves and wait. And wait. And wait.i'm in misery where you can seem
as old as your omens
and the mother we share will never keep
your proud head from fallingword count: 1419, graphics: rook
theme: the mother we share by chvrches