a crown of flowers {nori oneshot}

a crown of flowers {nori oneshot} Feb 7, 2018 0:46:12 GMT -5

Post by august vance d7b [Bella] on Feb 7, 2018 0:46:12 GMT -5

It’s been ten years since they were taken from me. Lighting, the hot late summer air, and a cornfield on fire—that’s what it was on the surface. But underneath there was the Capitol’s neglect, the peacekeepers’ misjudgment, and to my family it felt like a murder we’d never pin down. To some rich people far away in their fancy clothes and bathtubs full of money, it was nothing more than a sorry mistake--a loss of corn yield, probably, if the story had even made the headlines. But to me and my siblings it was like a fissure had opened up in the earth and swallowed everything good in the world. We had witnessed two stars burning up and the spots would be there in our eyes as long as we lived.

I’m standing in the field where the rains washed their bodies back into the soil, where the corn stalks stretch their fingers to the sky. Tonight there’s no storm--only stars watching me up there, cold and reserved as ever, and the Sometimes it seems like all the light is contained up there, out of reach, just to tease us. To remind us of what doesn’t belong to us anymore. Nana says all the living things are made of stardust, and once we all used to lay on a quilt in the yard, making up our own constellations and providing names where history had lost them. But she also said that’s where people go when they die, and now the stars just mark the distance.

They should’ve been buried in the meadow.

“Jade has your eyes, Mama,” I find myself whispering, almost to myself, to the cornfield. I wish I knew their exact spot, and I curse the men who run the fields for covering up their graves with more commodity like it never even happened. Now they’re everywhere and nowhere, with me but gone, and without a gravestone I pray to the earth.

”And Daddy, the boys are like you.” I speak up; they deserve more than a whisper. ”They’re tall and strong, all three, and Ezra’s voice is changing already. I think it’ll be like yours.” Like what I remember it to be--deep and melodic, always ready with a song. Said this morning in my mind / stay, oh freedom / Ha-le-lu / Ha-le-lu. What do I have that was passed down from them? I never got to find out.

I pause to choose something to say out of the many somethings I’ve held onto through the years. It’s hard to keep talking when there’s no response, but it’s what I came to do and I’m going to finish it.

”I wish I could have known you longer. So I could remember more. Remi and Tucker ask about you and there’s only so much I can say. I can never do you justice.”There are memories I can’t trust--the ones that flicker like a candle flame in my head, flashing in and out of view before I can catch them and pin them down. Are they really memories, or memories of photographs? Or are they memories of dreams? Nana’s stories? To reach for the real thing feels like trying to see underwater. Smiles and long legs, dark skin and a feeling of overwhelming warmth, voices joined in song, arms around me as I fell asleep--these are the ones I can trust. But no matter how hard I try I can’t picture all of them, all at once.

It’s not fair that we don’t have more.

It’s hard without you,” I admit. ”Ezra and I work in the fields and the kids are in the orchards but they’re hardly paying us anything. Nana makes us promise not to put in for tesserae but I can’t help but think about it when we’re all too hungry to sleep. I stay up and I lay there and wonder why we don’t have enough.” The confusion boils in my chest--my voice rises and I can’t stop it. ”Why do they let us starve?”

It sounds like complaining, and I know I shouldn’t be. I never complain, I need to be strong, I need to be the rock for the others to stand on.

But the weight pushes me until I can’t stand, pushes me down on my knees in the dirt, and though I promised myself to be strong, I can’t keep the tears from falling.

My shaking hands fidget with the petals of the flower crown I’ve brought, twirling one of the stems between my fingers. Making them is something I taught myself, and I never got to show my mother so I decided I’d try to make one perfect for her. It’s dandelion, daisies, and red clover; we can’t afford more than wildflowers, the seeds are too expensive and we need the land to supplement our food. But more than that, these flowers are free like she would have wanted. I place it on the ground at the corner where the plowed earth meets the grass.

“We’ve had to grow up so fast. I want to still be your little girl, I just don’t know if I can. I don’t think I am, because...because--” I choke on a sob, pulling my hair away from my face. “This place works it out of you. They work me so hard that when I come home I can’t think about games and bedtime stories, I have to think about real life and how we’re all going to survive.” I realize that I don’t even know who “they” are anymore. The overseers, the Capitol, the oncoming winter. They’re all working together to pull us down and I can feel the strain in my bones. ”I know I’m supposed to be there for everyone, but I--I don’t know if I’m as strong as everyone thinks I am.” It’s more than I’ve ever admitted to myself and I confess it so suddenly that I wish I could catch the words and put them back. To say it makes it real, and I don’t want it to be true.

“I don’t even know if you’re listening.” Beneath me the earth is warm and comforting, spongy from being recently plowed, and I pull up a handful of it, sifting it through my fingers. Usually I feel closer to my parents when I’m close to the earth, but right now the distance is heavy and opaque. Where do people really go when they die, the stars or the soil? I guess no one can answer unless they’ve been dead before—that’s the trick. So what, is it just whichever we want it to be?

“I hope you’re in the stars. I wouldn’t want you to be stuck in this place forever. I hope there are flowers that grow up there too.”

This feels silly. They’re not here listening to me, and maybe they’re not in the stars either. Maybe they’re not anywhere, and when we die we’re just dust and that’s how it’s supposed to be. Maybe this cornfield, this graveyard, isn’t going to give me any answers. I came out here to talk to them, to try to put away my past and find some way to make myself stronger. Instead it’s like something’s opened up inside me like a fountain and I can feel my courage emptying drop by drop.

I throw the dirt onto the flower crown, and with one handful after another I bury it in the earth, until it's just another lump of indistinguishable brown among the other lumps of brown and green and black.

When speaking to the dead offers nothing new (what had I thought would happen?) we can only look to the living. I make up sayings for myself like this all the time. How to move on?

They're not gone, Nori. I know it's what Nana would say. They are here with me. Maybe it's only in my memories, the belongings they left, my sisters and brothers, the stories they belong to, but they're here.

It's more than that, I realize. There are things that we love about people, and when they die we get sad because we think those things are gone forever. But if we keep those things close to our heart, and make them a part of us? Maybe they're never totally erased.

I rise to my feet. I'm not going to speak to the dirt or the flowers anymore like I'm talking to my parents. I whisper to them, to myself, in my mind, the things I wish to keep:

Lend me your smile, Mama. Your patience. Your beauty. Your care for others. Your endless strength of will. And Daddy, let me keep your temper--it was short but only because you never settled for a rotten deal. You never let anyone treat you less than you deserved. And please, lend me your songs. I'm going to need them.

And it's the funniest thing: I can hear one in my head already.