Candle in the Wind [zori, part 2]
Jan 30, 2019 3:55:39 GMT -5
Post by Lyn𝛿is on Jan 30, 2019 3:55:39 GMT -5
Caitlin Samuels
🐦
I am you
you are me
feel the grace
I set you free
🐦
🐦
I am you
you are me
feel the grace
I set you free
🐦
We'd planned to meet here at eleven.
I arrive in front of the classroom just as the bell tower across the street rings out, a buzzing clang that echoes through the empty hallway. Neither Kai nor Quest had shown up yet, nor for that matter the teacher; the door is locked, and when I press my face to the frosted window to peer between the blinds, the lights in the room are still off.
I tug at my scarf, adjusting it over my nose and mouth, my breath warm against the thick wool. Today might have been one of the warmer days, a beautiful Saturday in the dead center of a District Six winter, but that just meant barely above-freezing temperatures and the tiniest glint of sunlight shining through the endless gray sky.
Reaching into my bag again, I check for what must've been the sixth time this morning for the papers tucked away into one pocket. I haven't seen anything with the name Wilfred Sournois. I also don't think these shipment numbers have much to do with people going missing from the warehouse district, but they still don't make any sense, I'd told Kai, frowning over patterns that ought to exist but didn't, and ones that shouldn't have existed but did. They weren't proof, though. Merely pieces that added to the nagging sense of doubt that far less was happening because of chance than people pretended, but instead because of mysterious connections and secret agendas.
When I resettle the backpack over my shoulders, it feels as though I'm in high school again. The rows of classroom doors and bulletin boards here are almost the same as the ones that'd been at my school, and it seems like any minute there might be a student turning the corner and wondering what I'm doing here, or thinking that I look like a lost freshman waiting to get my schedule fixed. What am I doing here? I ask myself, not for the first time since Kai had shown up at the office. I wasn't supposed to sneak the papers out of the office (arranging the remaining ones carefully so nobody would notice them missing), or lie to Mother about grabbing lunch with a friend (it's good you're making more friends, she'd said, thankfully without any questioning), or go digging around dangerous places on nothing but a handful of suspicion and many, many questions with no answers.
- and, beneath it all, the steady refrain of Kai's words, we need to set things right. I lean back against one of the boards. That was what we were doing here. The more the truth was being buried, the more it mattered.
A stray staple catches on my scarf as I turn around, noticing the row of identical posters that had been fixed to the board. "BE A HERO, VOLUNTEER" is stamped in big block letters across the upper right of each sheet, with a figure beneath it sticking some sort of sword through the second O and making it look more like a Ø instead.
Hero. I stare at the poster, suddenly very aware of the pulse of my own heartbeat. Ingran. Ansel. Aeson.
Your brother was so brave -
Bryan, don't you dare -
Victors may or may not come from District Six, I suppose -
She's twelve! Why?!
The arena makes you into someone worth remembering -
Lies, I mutter, and the word comes out as a little cloud of fog between my clenched teeth. I reach for one of the posters, picking at a staple with my gloved fingertips. It slides out easily; I drop the bit of metal and watch it disappear into a mound of snow, leaving barely even an indentation against the surface. One by one the staples come out while I continue waiting, following the first one down until the poster, with nothing supporting it any longer, flutters away from the bulletin board and onto the ground.
Slowly, I bring my foot down over the wet poster, and grind the paper to a pulp in the muddy slush beneath the heel of my boot.
marguerite harvard d2a (zori)
