[Closed] A Buried and a Burning Flame

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Evening, 30 Bethas, 2720
Outside the Light

Good food and drink. Kafo does not remember food. He cannot think of it. He tries but there is an encroaching darkness at the edges of it, and it is swallowed up inside. He forgets, what it is to be hungry; he forgets.

The stars, and the wind, and the hard-soft earth, these he remembers. He forgets the names of the colors, sometimes, but he knows what colors are, and that they are beautiful, even when he cannot name them. Kafo does not know if he holds too tight; he does not let Risha go.

He loves Anfe, he knows he does, but is does love mean the same thing it did before? Last time, the time before, the first time, when he was alive? He tries to remember what love meant to him, then; he tries to remember how he-before-Kafo loved, and he cannot. What colors did he see? Where they the same?

He loves. He knows he loves. He hurts with Anfe’s pain, and Anfe hurts with his. This is love.

“I don’t want to go,” Kafo agrees, softly. “Not to the dark.”

He is quiet. “I don’t know,” Kafo says, slowly, into the air which whistles down over the cliffs. To be a liar does not mean he must lie, not all the time, not when he knows the truth. He cannot say no because he knows he has forgotten food, because the tsenid is rotten in his mouth now, but he thinks he liked it once. He does not know if he will like it again; he does not think so. He does not think the pieces you lose in the dark come back.

“Not all of it,” Kafo says quietly. “I don’t think the dark would hurt so much, if it wasn’t for the light. Sometimes I can’t stand it. I don’t know what I have left, how much, but I would rather have one star, than the dark, I would rather...”

“It hurts,” Kafo says. He remembers what it is called; he remembers how to say it. In this not-dark dark he is clear; he understands, and he can speak. He takes it because he knows it does not last. When he is clear he knows he is fraying, that he-who-is-Kafo-only-now is slipping into the dark, slowly. He remembers, now, how to let go, but he remembers too how to hold on, a little longer.

He turns his head; he looks at Risha, who is only the faintest gleam of eyes and paleness in the dark.

“Loving hurts,” Kafo says, “because you lose. Because you remember that you loved, but not who; because you do not remember all your selves, but you know they loved, and you forget - you forget - but it is better to hurt than to be empty inside. I would rather hurt.”

“Their gift is that they know how much to forget, when they go, and how much to remember.” Kafo’s voice is soft. “It wouldn’t be so bad in the dark, if I knew.“

He closes his eyes again; his cheeks are wet. He is crying, Kafo thinks; he cries for all the love he cannot remember, and for Anfe, because he knows he will have to leave him, before he is ready. He cries because it is harder to hold on than to let go, and he holds on despite it. He cries because he is afraid.

He sobs, then; his fingers let go of Risha, and he holds the face of his body, and it comforts him even though it shouldn’t. He remembers to breathe, slowly, in an even rhythm; he does not know how he knows. That has slipped from him, even now. He breathes, steadily, counting in and out.

“I forgot,” Kafo says quietly, blinking away the last of the tears, “that those like us could speak to the mona. I don’t know if I knew, before, if I had ever met anyone like you. I can’t - I didn’t think I could, without honor. I don’t want to but I’m grateful to know that maybe, once, I could have.”

[Tom Cooke]

The Edge of Serkaih

Evening on the 28th of Bethas, 2720

T
here are pauses. Some stretch longer than others; sometimes Kafo’s voice is so quiet he thinks the wind will whip it away, down to the lanterns where there’s nobody but the ghosts – if they do exist – to hear. He doesn’t interrupt him, not even when a pause goes on long enough he thinks he might be done. He listens, staring fixedly up at the stars.

He thinks he’s done crying; he’s a fool. The stars start to blur together again, one mant mass of glow and soft, faded color filling up the sky. He swallows a lump and suppresses another sob.

Kafo’s fingers are still wrapped round his upper arm, cold. He thinks he wants to set his hand on them, to ease them away gentle-like, to tell him he hasn’t got to worry. He doesn’t want to go, either.

He’s too good at holding on, and too bad at giving up; he suspects they both are.

Cracked in the water barrel, he thinks of Et’oso saying. Kafo’s voice is even and clear, now. It’s partly out of surprise that Risha cries, now – and partly because his heart knows what the truth looks like, he thinks, even if he hasn’t the honor to speak it or hold it. He’s flooded with gratitude and love, too, and they hurt. He doesn’t lower his head, for all the tears itch and spill out of his eyes; he just looks up at the stars.

“I would rather hurt,” he agrees, the words half-swallowed up by a sob.

He’s not sure if he ought to’ve said it aloud. Saying it’s made it real – it’s sharpened all the lights such that they hurt his raw, tired eyes; the wind that numbs and scrapes his face hurts, too, and he knows well now he’s not dreaming. Kafo’s hand’s gone from his arm, and he can hear the other man’s breath hitching and uneven, the voice he’s stolen rasping with sobs.

Risha doesn’t look over at him when he catches his breath. His own is tight in his chest, and he listens to Kafo steady his breathing in that old, familiar way, even though it must sting with his cracked ribs. He shuts his eyes, starlight dancing patterns against the inside of his eyelids, and breathes along the same rhythm.

It’s still strange, to hear speak to the mona on a human’s lips. The hairs on the back of his neck prickle, even in the cold. He catches the implication, too: you, like me, are without honor, and yet you speak to them.

He looks over, but Kafo is just the dim reflection of distant light in dark skin, the flicker of the whites of his eyes. He looks away. “I didn’t know if I could,” he says. I never had before, he thinks, but then thinks of the way Kafo spoke in the wagon; he knows better.

“They don’t hate you,” he says softly. “They don’t – they don’t know what’s happened to us, and they don’t like it, but they don’t hate you. There are more of us who speak to them and ask – who’re trying,” he says, squinting up at the stars, “who’re trying hard to figure out how to make sure nobody else gets lost like us. There are safe places for us, up in the mountains in Hox, and – and I don’t know where else.”

Maybe Kafo knew, and he’s forgot; maybe he’ll forget this tomorrow. He thinks it’s worth saying, anyway, through the sinking feeling that it’s not.

His breath catches again, and slowly, he evens it out. He remembers what he’s wanted to say for days. “Thank you,” he says. “You guided me, when I spoke to them a day ago. You reminded me to – breathe.” The tears have stopped, now, and he breathes, in and out. “Thank you.”

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Evening, 30 Bethas, 2720
Outside the Light

Kafo listens, as Risha speaks.

They don’t hate you, Risha says. He shudders, then. He does not cry, not anymore, but he takes a big, deep breath, which twinges deep in his cracked ribs. The pain isn’t so bad, when he knows to expect it. They aren’t damaged enough not to heal well, if he can remember to keep from straining them. He takes another deep breath.

He doesn’t know how long this fear has chased him. He doesn’t know if he has always remembered it, somewhere deep inside, or if he conjured it up only now with the feel of weighty memory. He thinks he has held it; perhaps not forever. Perhaps once he did know.

“The mountains in Hox,” Kafo agrees. He knows this will leave him; such things are hard to hold, and getting harder. Risha, he thinks to himself, Risha, Risha, Risha, Risha. If he can carry the name with him – if he can carry the memory of the lights, and the brush of an etheric clairvoyant field – this will be enough.

Kafo remembers the dark in the wagon; he remembers the pressing close of the sand, and the uneven rasping of the woman who he thought would return to the cycle. He remembers the sudden etheric flare of Risha’s field as he became the recipient, although he felt only the field, and could hold none of those words at the time.

“I remembered,” Kafo says, softly. He looks out over the lights of the lanterns. He is glad they came here. It was a struggle, with Anfe, to come, because he could tell him only where he wished to go, and none of the why. Sometimes he did not remember; sometimes he remembered not to say. But he knew he wished to come here; he knew he wished to see them. Even now, he is not sure he understands why, and he knows he could not explain.

“I reminded myself, too,” Kafo says, softly. “It is not so easy as remembering and forgetting, sometimes. There are pieces which stay, even as there are others which go. It was good to remember what came before; it is not all of me, anymore, but it is there, still. My tser’úxiraw was a long time ago; still I can claim something of what held me down, before.”

Kafo watches the lights, then; he drifts, onward. There were sharp edges, which he held within his fingers and they did not cut him, but they dull on their own, in time, so that he does not hurt himself with his own clumsiness.

He forgets; he knows that he forgets, but he cannot help it either. He knows that he forgets, but knowing that he forgets is not the same as remembering. Things drift away, or else he does. He does not know. Risha stays, and he remembers that he must get him home. This, he remembers.

When it is time, he stands, and Risha stands too. There are noises which come from both of them; Kafo feels something damp on his cheeks, but it goes, in time. There are no noises from his mouth, then. He goes back; he puts his back to the lights, and he takes Risha’s hand in his, because it is almost as good as touching, and he leads him back across the desert.

He remembers; he holds the remembering. He remembers, and they go through all the shadows, through the gap in the fence, and even though he touches his side against the post, he remembers silence, too. He takes Risha to the edge of the light; he cannot enter it. He cannot bear it. But he can take Risha to it, and leave him there, bathed and glowing, and he can be glad.