quinlan sepulveda | six

The first time he had been startled by the swoop of wings against his face and the prick of talons curling around his knuckles, he thought it a coincidence. Quin had not been too fond of animals then, given that he was half the size of most of them. He trembled as his father gently scooped the bird off of him, releasing him out the kitchen window and pulling the latch shut.

"You mustn't be so frightened of nature, mijo," he had said. "It's the one constant in this world."

Quin didn't understand - after all, he was only four then, and barely had object permanence as it was. But when he was seven and a gentle robin perched atop his head as he played outside, he began to realize that maybe his father was right. That was the year the war started and everything around him began to disappear as if it were only the result of a magician's spell rather than reality.

Everything was cyclical. He'd learned early on that when you tended to the earth, it would reward you with flowers and fruit and all sorts of things to adorn your life with. No matter how much sludge you dumped into the water in Six, it would always come back clean, and no one would ever see what they had done, how they managed to make a mess of things even if it was only for a short while. Quin didn't help in the waste facilities as often since he was in school, but on the days that he did go, he'd watch the wheels spin around and separate water from sludge and sediment, watch it all vanish into some tube to never be seen again. He wished the same were true in real life - that all the bad stuff just disappeared and didn't come back to bite you in the ass.

Quin didn't consider himself selfish, let alone a bad person, but he'd paid the price for his carelessness more than a few times. There was, of course, the time that he didn't harvest the garden when his parents had asked and everything got eaten by rabbits, or the time that he snuck out of the house to hang out with friends instead of watching his younger sister, and he returned home to find the house a wreck and his sister gone. (She was fine, obviously, but that night - and its numerous derivatives - replayed itself in his nightmares for weeks.) It was better to be reliable, and honest, and good, because people didn't keep promises like nature did and the latter was already so volatile. So, that was what he chose to do - Quin chose to smile, and laugh, and steer clear of whispers of rebellion, because who knew what would happen to him if he did otherwise?

No, he'd rather not entertain that idea. Because if bad things could happen to people for no reason, then what would that mean for him? For his sister, Seraphine? For his parents, his extended family? Everything had to have a purpose.

And he found his in wandering through vast fields, breathing in the scents of yesterday, today, and tomorrow. It was the only thing that was constant, after all.