MPI: Discys 3
It’s almost apologetic, like it can’t help what it’s about to do, down to the roots.
They did their best to pretend there was some refreshing quality to the breeze rather than the dragons breath it imitated. A pair of larks darted about the branches above them. The shadows didn’t cool entirely, but the quiet afternoon and the low hum of the highway a few miles away helped ease the press of the heat.
“Have you thought about what you want us to say at your funeral?”
“I think it’s bad luck for a person to write their own eulogy.”
“How do you figure?”
“There’s no telling what we’ll wander into in the dark. A lot of people are afraid of it for that reason, and I completely understand. But I think they view it as disappearing into nothing rather than the infinite possibilities of which oblivion is only one. I’d like to think there’s more value to mourning than therapy, that the words you offer and craft in grief help build a sturdy road the departed can walk without concern into whatever it is they’re heading into. To write your own eulogy would be to will your own afterlife. I’m not a great believer, but there’s something inherently blasphemous and arrogant about that, I feel. Better to lean on the support of others, let them build roads for us out of good will.”
“Do you write roads for everyone?”
“Dear lord, no. That would take way too long. No, I mostly write them when I’m conflicted about someone. People for whom my emotions have become vexed. It helps me understand how I feel about them.”
“And where has that led you?”
His hand traveled along a raised root of the tree they were leaning against. A small part of it chipped away in his hand. He picked it apart with furrowed brow. “I’ve learned how to be thankful for sadness. You know, sometimes I get this weird hollow right between my chest and my stomach, just in front of my spine. I haven’t completely figured out what makes it bloom, and I used to hate how it would sap everything.”
“You don’t hate it anymore?”
“Hate is a big word, and this feeling doesn’t fill its definition anymore. I’d say I’m more annoyed. It’s the strange nature of it that annoys me the most because it doesn’t swallow greedily. I’m not sure how to explain it.” He was discarding chips of bark absentmindedly between them.
“It’s almost apologetic, like it can’t help what it’s about to do, down to the roots.” Her hands twisted into the grass corralled within her crossed legs. She plucked a couple blades, twirled them in her fingers, and pinched sections off to lay on his bark pile.
“When did you realize the thing was perennial?”
“Early twenties, I reckon. I was twelve or thirteen when I first noticed it. I talked myself into it being nothing more than early onset teenage angst— it’ll go away. Never did, of course.” She threw down a blade of grass with an air of finality.
“Is that why you started writing?” His wood chip landed softly on her blade, smugly.
“Probably. Have to make sense of the world somehow. Speaking of making sense, does our cosmic civil engineer have a favored creation?” She brought her hand down on the pile.
He stared at her hand on the pile. He nodded.
“Well, let’s hear it then.”
He lifted his head slowly, stopping at the peak to look her in the eyes as he placed his hand on hers. “She was a flash of lightning in our grounded lives. A flash that dazzled and disappeared in a blink, leaving behind splintered souls, trunks marked down the middle with scars that burn perpetually along the seams. Our ears reach desperately for the thunder of her voice, now a beautiful echo in the silence she’s left behind.”
Miguel felt his chest shallow. The warm air squeezed his lungs. In her eyes was a diligent searching. He wanted to guide her gaze to whatever curiosity it was that winded its way over his brow, down the cheekbones, curled up over his lips. Try as he might, his own gaze found itself pulled to the dark of her pupils. They drew him to tumble through the eternal void of her soul’s windows. He could feel his body tingle with the plunge.
Agustina was staring into a surreal face. A face with a name that changes as soon as you’ve looked away. It was a face shed looked at plenty, but had never laid gaze upon. She searched this familiar stranger, found comfort in the prickly cheeks, intrigue on the lips. The hand on hers emanated the warmth of a body tensed with confused anticipation. Her own hand flexed its fingers in search of the cool earth beneath it. Polished tips dug into the dirt to siphon heat. In the exchange between skin and soil, the crinkle of dust pearled against tips bested the anxious reach for practicality in favor of the uncertain.
They understood the joined hands as the irresistible center. Oppressive heat, squalid grackles, even the quiet dead could no more look away than Agustina and Miguel pull free from what had once whispered in either ear that this was the natural denouement. There was no veil lifted nor grand revelation. Acceptance was imminent.
Miguel dove deeper further faster into that infinite well that up until the moment he’d only ever had the courage to stand at the edge of. Agustina sensed the end of intrigue, and through eyes darting with the excited anticipation of one whose tongue can practically taste the answer. Her curiosity would soon be sated in the only way anything of vital import can be when mutual understanding requires shared trust through physical sealing of two beings whose lives had been twined long ago. One could hear the others breath, feel it through parted lips which had all but merged at the heart of—
—¡Quiubole vergas!— Elias’s peanut head had wrapped itself around the trunk of the tree like some unholy squirrel with ruffled fur and dazed eyes.
The union ripped itself apart. Agustina instinctively gripped the soil with her hand with such force that it became a moderate clump that she winged at the evil squirrel head in one motion that made it practically tether around the trunk.