This is my submission for the 2012 Earth Day contest. I was tired of the patronizing aspect of environmental protectionism (like it's for the earth's own good that we recycle; as if the earth cares what temperature it is) but I may have gotten a little carried away...
Also inspired by the stunning beauty of another DC cherry blossom festival.
Thanks to smallsbag for taking the time to edit, and for the thoughtful feedback!
***
The cities still burned.
The screams were long silenced and flames no longer gushed from a churning black sky, but the western horizon was still marked by four angry, orange-grey bruises. An acrid stink soaked the humid summer air.
Liorit wondered dully if her mother and sisters had screamed. Shrieking was six year old Amith's habit; she screamed everything from her joy to her anger to her boredom, and would have greeted her first and last taste of true pain and terror in the same way. Shalhavit might have tried not to panic, though. She was tough, for nine, and would have spent her final minutes looking for a way out. And Mother would have stayed brave, for both of them.
Liorit's throat swelled shut, but the tears would not come.
She searched for an emotion and found indignation. It was the wrong emotion. She knew that. She should feel rage, grief, fear. But all she managed was mild annoyance with the four unceasing, distant blazes. Why should the cities still burn, now that everyone in them was dead? It seemed so pointless, and that exasperated her.
The immortals would know. They could speak with the wind and the fire; they could ask. Liorit could ask them, and they could ask the Wild Earth.
She resolved to ask, and the stinging discomfort in her throat eased slightly.
Amiel?
She frowned in confusion when no sound emerged to accompany the thought. She'd moved her lips; she was sure of it. She tried again.
"Amiel?"
It was a hoarse whisper, barely audible even in the stillness of the desert.
"Amiel!"
There. Her voice was scratchy and raw, but it was there. Liorit found it without relief.
Amiel didn't answer, though, and she looked around to realize that she was alone.
She stood on a low ridge, a stretch of dusty earth barely elevated above the surrounding fields of sun-bleached grass. The sun was high overhead, crashing down onto the rolling contours of desert hills; even the pale blue sky seemed washed-out by its glare.
She tried to recall how long she had kept vigil over the burning cities. She remembered leaving Chay and Liat wrapped together in their blankets. Since close to dawn, then, if the air had still been cool enough to merit blankets.
Yes, she remembered. A red-gold dawn. Amiel had had the watch while his brother slept. She thought he might have objected to her wandering off, but the details of an argument escaped her.
No matter. She hadn't gone far. She would find Amiel, and she would ask him about the fires.
With that resolve firmly in place, Liorit clambered down from her ridge. Her limbs seemed ignorant of the fog that saturated her mind; they moved with their customary sure swiftness, oblivious to the chaos of her thoughts.
Returning to their small camp, she found Chay and Liat still fast asleep. The blankets had been kicked off to the side, but they were nestled together despite the heat.
Liorit let them sleep. She scanned the surrounding slopes for signs of Amiel. It took her some scant heartbeats to find him; amidst the sparse low shrubs and tangled dead bushes, there rose a single flowering tree on a hill.
The tree had not been there at dawn.
By the time Liorit scaled the gentle rise, a light patina of sweat covered her whole body, and moisture beaded along her hairline. She wished she'd thought of water.
Amiel was hunched against the blossoming tree that had no place in the blazing Levant desert. The tree was dark limbed and slender, and dripped with cool pink buds. Amiel was sprawled on its roots, back bent, head bowed, and arms wrapped tightly around the slim trunk. His infuriating, perfect composure was gone. Silent sobs wracked his large frame.
Liorit hesitated. Her heart slid to the right. She knew she should feel a rage of emotions, but yesterday's horror had wrapped her in numbness. All she felt was pity for the broken man hugging his unnatural tree. All the despair and helplessness piled and concealed in her stomach—fire and wind reducing her world to a smoldering horror, the deaths of her mother and little sisters—every pain and terror channeled themselves into a desperate need to stop Amiel's tears.
Not because she loved him, which she didn't. Not because he had done his best to save her family, which hadn't been enough.
She wanted to comfort him because he was feeling everything she could not.
She saw in him a perfect reflection, only her side of the mirror was wrong. She had been dry-eyed since yesterday, and the grief ached and stabbed where it tried futilely to free itself from her torturous cocoon of numbness. She craved release, but it eluded her.
She couldn't comfort herself, since she couldn't
cry
, but maybe soothing Amiel would be the next closest thing.
She approached deliberately and sank to the earth near his heaving form. The soil was soft and moist with the foreign nutrients needed by the tree. Wetness surprised her knees, seeping through the light linen of her skirts.
Liorit wondered if the Wild Earth felt pain to reshape itself thusly; if transplanted by human hands, the tree's roots would have quickly been crushed by the hard baked earth, its cool flowers withered by the heavy sunshine. It was meant for another place, and another season.
"The tree," she said quietly, "is wondrous."
Amiel raised his head. His bronzed skin was flushed, tears clumped his overlong lashes, and the dark curls straggling to his chin were a disheveled mess. His eyes were deep with ancient regrets and battered with newly raw sorrow.
"Cherry." His voice was its usual velvet-wrapped thunder. "It's called a cherry tree. They were my daughter's favorite." He shifted his large form, unfolding gracefully to sit up straighter beside his tree. His robe hung open above its corded belt, revealing a long swathe of defined chest and stomach muscles.
"Daughter?" Liorit echoed.
Carob brown eyes flicked from her to the arching dark branches and pale flowers above. Although his sobs had ceased, Amiel did nothing to dry the tears that streaked both cheeks and glistened along the square line of his jaw.
"She was four, when the wild waters came. One of the youngest." He spoke softly, tranquilly even, lending a serene acceptance to his hopelessness. "I would coax cherry blossoms from the Wild for her while she was still at the breast, and she spoke the Wild Tongue before she could say 'Mama'."
The Wild Tongue. Liorit recalled her purpose. "Amiel," she appealed, "please make the fires stop."
She saw in his face that he'd forgotten. His tears had been for his own family, not hers. His darkest nightmares were of water, not fire.
It didn't matter. Two thousand years ago or yesterday, the loss was the same. Liorit slipped closer and rose up onto her knees, sliding deft hands around his neck to pull his head under her chin. She hugged him to her chest, stroking his shoulder blades as if he were a child. Like a child, he let her.
"Please," she said again. "They—they're still burning. For nothing, now." Her voice was poised, reasonable, treacherous. She could beg no more than she could cry.
"Liorit," Amiel finally whispered. "You know I can't."
Anger sliced through the enveloping numbness, and Liorit froze, startled into stillness. She examined the sudden emotion, dancing tentatively around it at first, then gripping it firmly. A faint thrill ran through her when it didn't dissolve in her grip. She clung to the anger, stiffening her embrace.
"You won't," she accused flatly.
Amiel pulled away. Coldness had replaced the anguish on his handsome immortal features. "We do not command."
"So you've said," Liorit snapped. She ducked her head and seethed, slanting a glare up at Amiel from behind her long dark curtain of curls.
"You flatter. You cajole." She threw his mantra back at him verbatim, surprising herself with the precision of her own memory. "You build a rapport and work to gain the Earth's trust, that the Wild elements might act in accordance with your wills."
She sensed bitterness, pounced, and triumphantly reclaimed that emotion, too. It rivaled the anger in strength.
She smacked the cherry tree, hard enough to bruise the heel of her palm. "The Wild Earth answered this
request
. Maybe," she suggested, "you just don't want some things badly enough."
She said it to wound, to punish him for not being able to truly control the elements, the way the stories said.
The stricken look in his eyes told her that he believed it. That he'd thrown the same accusation at himself, again and again, for two thousand years.
Remorse, shame, guilt. These were right. This was what she wanted to feel. But the emotions she soaked up from Amiel were not enough. Liorit wanted to feel more. The desire to comfort Amiel was swept away by a powerful desire to share his pain. So she twisted the knife.
"Did you even try? Did you ask? Or were you too scared of what it would mean if the Wild listened, this time?"
A corner of her mind asked if she was trying to provoke the immortal into killing her. The idea surprised and excited her.
Amiel only watched her in silence, though, his perfect face revealing no denial, no panic, no more guilt. His own peculiar brand of quiet anger had reasserted itself, and he had recovered his everlasting, absolute control.
No, no, no.
Control was what she was trying to escape. Remorse and shame began to fade, slipping away faster the more frantically she chased after them. Anger and bitterness followed, and a vast, hollow numbness opened to swallow her.
"Please, Amiel," she whimpered. "Don't take them away. I want the pain. Give it back, please." So she could beg, after all. Curious.
He recoiled from her, pity creasing his dark brow.
"Please," she pleaded, desperate. "I didn't mean it. I know you wanted to save your wife, your daughter. I'm sorry! Just give me back the pain." Inspiration struck. "Burn me! Call fire, if you can't banish it. You can do this much. I know you can."
Amiel rose swiftly to his feet and towered over her, dark eyes unreadable. He was stern and imposing and beautiful. "Stop it, Liorit," he commanded. "Stop it, now."
She blinked up at him, trying to puzzle out his distress. "Stop?"
"Stop," he repeated firmly. There was power in the calm order. Somehow, they had switched places, and he was reassuring her, now. "Stay here. Stay with me."
"Stay," she repeated. She tasted the word until it made sense. He thought she wanted to die. She reminded him of those he'd lost to the Wild Tongue, the ones who spoke too often with the Earth, until they could understand nothing else. In their last days, the Lost spoke only of their own eagerly anticipated deaths.
"No." She shook her head. "I'm human, remember? I cannot hear the Wild, and I don't want to die. I just want the pain, Amiel." She dug her hands into the soft dirt and clawed her fingers into fists. "Please?"
