Conversations About Dead People
Oct. 31st, 2018 11:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cute_bruiserThere are stars in Molly's room tonight, even though the bedroom curtains are closed. She isn't surprised, and she isn't scared: some of her best nights - best times - have been lying awake to watch the sky over Los Angeles with her siblings, talking and drowsing as the sky turns from navy velvet, star-spangled, to pink to orange to blue; always the same bright clean blue, even now, like a childhood dream of a swimming pool at Disneyland.
She remembers... what does she remember? Hollywood stars immortalised as statues - white as letters - in the park; Tinsel-town twinkles in the sky over the Hollywood Sign. Long close-warm nights lying in the grass of the Los Angeles hills picking out signs from the glitter amongst the black. There's Virgo, Nico's star sign; there's Majesdane, which Karolina's parents once called home (and helped to destroy). There's the Zodiacal nonsense adults believe in; there's the cold hard reality of space travel and magic, the facts that only children know. That only children, lost and running from-to-away-battlewards, believe in.
(There in the darkest dark is Limbo, where the Gibborim ... wait.)
She remembers watching her sisters and brother die on TV screens; she remembers Gert's slumped and blood-stained body, blade-pierced. She remembers Alex, taken by fire; she remembers their parents - all their parents - taken by the storm they started. She remembers times with no stars at all.
So she isn't scared and she isn't startled, when she opens her eyes to see the girl made of stars, but sits up in bed at the end of the universe.
And she says, "Hello."
She remembers... what does she remember? Hollywood stars immortalised as statues - white as letters - in the park; Tinsel-town twinkles in the sky over the Hollywood Sign. Long close-warm nights lying in the grass of the Los Angeles hills picking out signs from the glitter amongst the black. There's Virgo, Nico's star sign; there's Majesdane, which Karolina's parents once called home (and helped to destroy). There's the Zodiacal nonsense adults believe in; there's the cold hard reality of space travel and magic, the facts that only children know. That only children, lost and running from-to-away-battlewards, believe in.
(There in the darkest dark is Limbo, where the Gibborim ... wait.)
She remembers watching her sisters and brother die on TV screens; she remembers Gert's slumped and blood-stained body, blade-pierced. She remembers Alex, taken by fire; she remembers their parents - all their parents - taken by the storm they started. She remembers times with no stars at all.
So she isn't scared and she isn't startled, when she opens her eyes to see the girl made of stars, but sits up in bed at the end of the universe.
And she says, "Hello."
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Date: 2018-12-02 10:24 pm (UTC)Molly pushes the duvet back and sits up, sliding one foot to the floor.
"I thought, nights like this, you get to meet... Like, I don't think I know you."
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Date: 2018-12-03 10:36 pm (UTC)The stars put something into Molly's hand: a long drop earring, ending in a delicate cross.
_Nico says hello!_
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Date: 2018-12-03 10:42 pm (UTC)She closes her fingers on the earring, drawing it towards her.
"I'm sorry, um... Nico's not.
"She's dead. I'm sorry."
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Date: 2018-12-04 12:23 am (UTC)_...Did you check? She's sneaky._
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Date: 2018-12-04 01:56 am (UTC)She realises she's twisting the earring between her fingers, rolling the spider-silk-thin chain back and forth reflexively. She's sat on the edge of her bed now, both feet on the floor, leaning towards the stars.
"I mean, I saw it. On TV. But she... she wouldn't stay away this long if it wasn't for real. She wouldn't do that to us."
To me. She wouldn't do that to me.
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Date: 2018-12-04 02:30 am (UTC)_Television is sneaky, too. You didn't go look?_
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Date: 2019-01-07 01:57 pm (UTC)Uncharacteristically for Molly she ducks her head; the long curtains of hair fall forward, half-hiding her face.
"No, I... I ran." Though her head is still down, her green eyes are huge as she looks up, straight at the stars before her. "I ran away."
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Date: 2019-08-29 01:30 am (UTC)"Runaways gotta run, kiddo," the stars say, in Nico's voice.
_Running's good!_ they add, in their own voice.