Stasis and Darkness [Finished]

[Dark]

He choose the old graveyard; Ezra had taken him there once. It was situated on a hill in the old residential quarter, a dilapidated sprawl of dead grass and cracked tombstones. The gate that ran the perimeter was rusted iron, low to the ground; he stepped over it carefully, muscles not quite quivering with strain. The bundle in his arms squirmed.

The tree was the only thing alive in the entire park--a gnarled willow, sparse leaved, with one lone dandelion. The sickly looking thing wavered in the evening breeze. He sat down, back against the rough bark of the tree, and tilted his head back. The stars seemed particularly close tonight.

A thin wail pierced the eerie silence of forgotten lifetimes, and he shushed it. Crinkled blue eyes stared up at him from beneath his quieting hand.

He'd thought about drowning it, but he'd kept walking. Past the bridge and past the river. All the possible paths stretched out in front on him.

He placed the bundle underneath the willow; maybe time would erase the memory of its existence. Just like it had done to all the other people who had been left behind in this dead place.

He walked away.

[Bee]

]

Ezra had come again to the graveyard seeking some kind of inspiration. He needed to write a song. Not for himself, of course; he planned never to delve into music again, but his rent was due and he was extremely strapped for cash, and he had very reluctantly gotten in touch with his older circle and offered to write them songs for money. Provided he could remain anonymous. The emo scene, fond of crippling depression, had agreed enthusiastically, and if Ezra could compose something suitably dour, he would have enough to cover both the rent and his grocery bill. He had been eating little but noodles for the last few weeks, and he had a vague feeling that ribs poking out probably was not good.

He had all the elements he needed--blood, death, doom, gloom, breaking hearts, the works--but nothing was getting assembled into a real product. He wandered through the rows of headstones, trying to let the gloom flow through him, but only thing coming into his brain was--

Mewling. Pathetic, loud, a small child's wail.

Ezra turned, pinpointing the sound, and was surprised by the sight. Under a willow, propped up against a gravestone, was a small, noisy bundle. Someone had left an infant among the scores of lonely dead.

He picked it up. A girlchild, Corvistowne, adorable. Ezra felt the stirrings of something he had not thought himself capable of feeling. Attachment. Vague though it was, it was there. He had not the faintest idea what to do with a child, but how often did someone leave a baby in a graveyard? Who really visited graveyards? This was meant to happen. Something in his life was actually meant to happen.

He smiled at the baby, and hoped the chain in his mouth didn't frighten her. "Your name is Senka," he said. "I hope you like noodles."

[Dark]

"A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing." -- Ambrose Bierce



Senka had a hard time learned to walk, tottering about on ungainly legs after her Uncle Ezra and never quite succeeding in avoiding that breakable and priceless vase, that crack in the sidewalk, or that little-old lady with all the grocery bags. She got into so many accidents during the course of her early years that her Uncle Ezra never went anywhere without an ample supply of band-aids and cold presses.

And even when she grew into her paws, she never completely outgrew her aggravating habit of getting into easily avoidable scrapes. Uncle Ezra still carried band-aids.

At the moment, she'd tumbled head-first into a freshly dug grave. She blinked up at the starry sky. Her Uncle Ezra and she visited the graveyard quite a bit--he said it helped him channel his inner "emo," whatever that meant, and afterwards they always had something to eat besides noodles.

Senka liked noodles, though, so she'd never really minded the lack of actual protein.

[Bee]

Senka, thin-faced and gangly of limb, had a tendency toward awkward movement, and Ezra had long since learned to exercise constant vigilance in treating her scrapes and assorted bruises. He tried to encourage her to more sedentary pursuits--reading, knitting, something, anything, whatever would keep her in one place--but he figured children should be allowed to do what they liked to do so long as they weren't hurting anyone else, and Senka thus had leave to mostly do as she pleased.

Now his wayward ward was lying prone at the bottom of a hole.

"Do you need a hand?" he asked, making his way over to the grave. He gently removed the chain from his mouth--ages since he'd done that, and the second it was gone, he wanted it back--and offered a paw. "I think someone will probably be back to place a dead body and more dirt into this, and I don't think you want to be there when that happens. We have enough trouble washing grime off you as it is."

[Dark]

Senka had never been anywhere but the City, and though she liked to hear stories about the Other places, she never felt any particular, burgeoning need to see them. She was happy, trailing in her Uncle Ezra's shadow.

Her Uncle Ezra had told her once about the place he had once called home: dark, dismal Torquehelm. It didn't sound all that interesting, really, but Senka had always been fascinated by her uncle's ornamentation. "Bindings," he called them.

At the moment, the pounded metal of the chain glinted dully in the moonlight as he reached a paw down for her. She batted at it dutifully; she'd always fancied getting one herself, someday.

She fumbled at the sheer, dirt walls, feeling dirt give way under her searching paws; she'd never be able to make the jump. With no other option, she latched onto the proffered arm with tooth and nail. Her Uncle Ezra would pull her up; he always did.

[Bee]

With Senka deposited back onto safer soil, Ezra told sat down by the large willow under which he had found her, and began to jot down song ideas by the flimsy light of a kerosene lamp. This was the last number in his latest batch, and in the morning he could send them off, to be doled out to creatively bankrupt artists. It was a good, easy life.

Knowing that he needed to keep Senka occupied if he wanted to accomplish anything, he said, "We're going to play a game. Remember this one? You read lots of gravestones, report back to me, and tell me how you think they died." He poked the slab next to him. Edgar Roethke, died in the summer at age nineteen. "Drug overdose," he guessed. He wagged a paw. "Just like that. And don't come back over here till you've found something good."

[Dark]

"A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education." --Mencken

---

Uncle Ezra was all for keeping her busy, and, being as such, he'd started her in on her higher education as soon as she could form almost-understandable gibberish. Today's lesson encompassed Edgar Allen Poe.

"Here is Poe. Read him. Love him."

The volume he'd handed her was almost as big as she was; black leather with thin, gold-edged pages. She'd almost immediately flipped to the index and randomly picked a poem, trusting her Uncle Ezra to have directed her towards some truly amazing lyrical prose. She might not understand everything that she read, but she always liked it. Uncle Ezra hadn't led her astray yet.

She fell in love; he had her from the start.

It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of ANNABEL LEE;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

[Bee]

Ezra threw quite a bit of time into Senka's education. It was his wish for her to be as well-rounded and knowledgeable as possible, which meant that she needed to know everything and be able to do everything. This was not a realistic goal, he knew, but he was going to impart as much information as Senka was capable of assimilating. Fortunately, she seemed to like to learn, which made his job a good deal easier.

She took to poetry well enough, which was delightful, and he considered taking her to the next step of art. He gets the piano from from someone in the business who has more pianos than most humans have pairs of socks, and tunes it up. Senka won't be able to play it truly until she at least attains a bipedal form and is graced with fingers, but Ezra is going to give her the basics.

[Dark]

There was something indescribably comforting in the way numbers could be manipulated; multiply and divide, subtract and add, square root and square. Senka wasn't all that good with numbers, but that didn't stop her from liking them.

She flipped the book close and nudged it towards the pile with all the others, and looked longingly at her piano. She knew how to read music--Uncle Ezra had taught her how--but she couldn't play; not very well, at least. Her Uncle Ezra had taken her to the concert hall on several occasions, and each time her ache to play grew and at the same time reasserted her own inadequateness. She just didn't have the finger dexterity to coax that same beautiful music out of the instrument.

She would, someday, though. Uncle Ezra had told her she could do anything she wanted to. And she would.

But first she needed some noodles.