.:Now You See Me:. [Riven & Salome]

One of your earliest memories is of the brook by the old oak tree on a hill. Just past the edge of your cousin Sampon’s farm, a hill wedges up out of the ground with a sprawling oak tree. Out beyond was a brook, though back then its expanse was wider and deeper, where all the Izar children would spend summer afternoons throwing their tired bodies into the water. You could have been no more than four, still holding onto Benat’s hand to be led to the water’s edge. While the older boys jumped, and splashed, the girls sat alongside to braid their hair, or lay in the warmth of the sun. Nekane was more interested in trawling for toads, and so you pulled your knees up against your chest and watched the rest. Boredom led to curiosity—and for any four year old, it meant getting your hands dirty.

You squeezed chunks of earth trudged up from below the water and began to smear them across your face. You liked the cool feeling of dirt as it covered your already dark complexion. Soon you had slathered some on your arms, and more around your neck. Is that a swamp monster I see? You could hear Benat’s voice across the water. He was just shy of seventeen; the oldest of the cousins. Deval and Sampson kept splashing—you have to think if Levi and Wilson were there but, you think you remember their dreamy faces—all of them seem not to notice the little girl covered in mud. You have two fistfuls of mud in your hands when he speaks, and you freeze. “I’m hiding.” You whisper out. Because you had already learned in a crowd full of boys that you could be seen but not heard, in your own little world.

It’s no surprise when you pour over the paints and earths scattered across the camouflage station. You have already committed not to fight—or rather, that you cannot hope to live and die by a sword. You take a glob of charcoal and begin to dot underneath your eyes. You will live in your own world, one in which you survive just as long as you can. Perhaps it will be moment, seconds, hours, or days. At this point, you imagine luck will determine fate just as much as your ability will. You take a fist full of clay and mix it carefully into water, creating a reddish sludge.

You smear this across your face, contrasting against the smoky black around your eyes. You drip more along your arms and grin, feeling like a child. “Do you think I look more like I live in the trees, or that I came out from underneath the bottom of a lake?” You say, turning to someone in your periphery. Even if the days are numbered and the odds low, there was no reason not to keep the joy you had.