Rockin' Night at the Belly (H 1.2, L 1.2)

Though my physical eyes are closed, in my minds eye, the distorted vision of a bullet suspended in time before I hear the gunshot. Everything freezes. My eyes, the only things that move in this dramatic preview of unfolding events, flit towards the target. No! The small missile is heading right for Mynah! You were too late. Too slow. Too indecisive. Is that my internal voice? Or is the Gray Wing rebuking me? My throat constricts, another allowance in this space of arrested time. I need to go to...

Time resumes. Kestrel reacts; Mynah screams. I jolt forward, gasping, my palms hit the table surface. I raise my head and look to the bar, seeing both Mynah and Helix tending to a third person. The boy. The Sippians looked bewildered and alarmed. Even their new leader, Hard Strike's kid, looks shocked, before resetting his face to neutral. I raise my hands up, palms facing him. "Peace, Lucky, peace." I drop my right arm on Kestrel's shoulder to keep her from any engagement, then remove my goggles from my face, so as to look Lucky Strike in the eye.

I walk toward him, slowly and calmly, hands still raised. I know he needs to stand up for his feral creature, regardless of his approval of her deed. He's still new to the leadership game and needs to save face. I intend to allow him to. I stop halfway toward him and wait for him to cross to meet me, as if daring him to the brave act of walking within striking distance of an old man. "Let us speak together."

Mynah acts so quickly and so confidently that it leaves me in a shocked dream state as she slices Kiwi's shirt from his body, exposing for a moment the tattoo he got after and Potpie mutually dared each other to get them - whatever they designed for the other. Potpie used to be a bartender here, but he left for a kitchen job on one of the big freighters that takes long-haul journeys over the waters. I wonder if he's ever been shot out there, and if anyone saw the potpie tattoo Kiwi had the artist put on his forearm.

Potpie could have chosen a kiwi tattoo for Kiwi to return in kind. He said they look like big, hairy zercombobs, but I've never seen one before to confirm that assertion. Instead, though, he chose an orange butterfly with black-tipped wings. I have seen those, once. I was just an Ivy at the time, clinging to the highest reaches of a tower no one else had dared to climb, lost in the clouds and soaking up feeling completely and utterly alone in the world. I didn't even have the Whispers to keep me company then. And suddenly a stream of color flitted from the fog in a rushing river. Hundreds - no, thousands - of orange butterflies danced around me, splitting around the tower and rejoining again on the other side. I watched them, wishing I could join them, until they disappeared into the clouds.

I don't know why Potpie chose that for Kiwi's tattoo, but I couldn't bear to hold his hand and watch as he got it. It puts a pit in my stomach even thinking about it now, a longing...a desire to be untethered and free, light enough to float away on the breeze.

I snap out of the memory and look at Mynah with shock. "We? I don't...I don't know how to do that."

My face is splattered in blood, dress stained with it, and I cover the wound with my hands, pressing down and looking at Kiwi's ashen face with concern. "Tweezers? No. No, nothing like..." I look up at her. "We have chopsticks. In the drawer over there." I incline my chin toward the place. "Kiwi was teaching me how to..." My throat strangles the words off and I have to swallow before I finish, "...use them."

Helix,

Huddled there, behind the bar where he worked with you, with a Talon by your side, you try to staunch the blood seeping out of Kiwi. With chopsticks and a steady hand, Mynah tries to find the bullet and remove it. But it isn't enough. The two of you aren't medics like Edmund and there isn't enough time to get him to The Tower. Kiwi shares no last words with you or the woman trying desperately to save him. He doesn't suddenly wake and look into your eyes. He passes quickly, like mercury through a crack in the glass.

You know he's dead before Mynah stops trying to remove the bullet. At some point, she flung the chopsticks away in fury and gently pushed fingers into the wound trying to find the bullet as if that would magically suck all the red from the floor back into his body. She still working now, trying to probe and pull that bullet. Maybe there was no bullet and Nuport shot Kiwi down with hate and spite alone. Your lap is soaked and growing sticky. The battle is quiet if it's happening around you, not that you care.

What do you do?

I nod once and continue to look at Lucky Strike, holding his gaze for several seconds. "I understand. Your mother wouldn't have made the mistake I did in letting a wild creature live to cause meaningless anguish." I pause and tilt my head slightly, studying him. Softly, I murmur to him, "I see much of your mother in you, Lucky. I think you'll prove yourself worthy of her legacy."

Then I turn my head at catch Kestrel's eyes. "It's time to go." I turn and walk to the bar, seeing two people and one corpse behind it. I walk around behind the bar and kneel down next to the body, placing a hand on Mynah's shoulder. With my other hand, I dip four fingers in Kiwi's blood while uttering a prayer softly. With my dyed fingers, I trace four lines on each of Kiwi's cheeks and triangle on his forehead. He wasn't one of us, but he was connected to the family. Therefore I consecrate his soul to the Gray Wing.

When it is finished, I rock back on my heels and turn to Helix. "We are leaving. You can come with us." Then I help Mynah to her feet and pivot towards the exit.

There is nothing beautiful about death. No poetic words to make it less painful. No bright side.

I realize he's gone before Mynah does. I tell her to stop. I tell her it's too late. I can't look away from his face. I should have held his hand while he got that stupid tattoo.

I'm vaguely aware of someone else behind the bar. Big, worn fingers drawing shapes on Kiwi's face, making his uncharacteristically blanched features even more alien, propelling him further from this realm.

It's not until Mynah stands that I look up and register Litch's face, his invitation to leave with them. I watch them with glassy eyes as Mynah talks about revenge...for her son. And it's like Kiwi's pulled another world away from me. I thought we were the same - motherless children - but we're not, and I can't unknow that fact.

What now? I demand to the Whispers in my head, as if they're responsible for this. What use are you now? I stand, everything in me wanting to take the offered escape, but how can I leave Kiwi here? How can I leave Dakota behind? No.

My body is a sail caught in a sudden gust, every sinew tightening against the gale, every part stretched to squealing resistance.

"No," I tell Litch, the word the first crack of lightning from the impending storm. I move out from behind the bar, my skirt suctioning to my thighs with blood, my footprints leaving a trail in my wake. "No," I repeat, halfway to my target, to Lucky Strike. When I reach him, I slap him across the face, leaving a bloody handprint behind. "Get out," I demand, my voice trembling and low. "You are BANISHED from the Belly. The Sippians are banished."

I have no right to do it. I don't care. People have been shot here before. Usually we serve on. But not one of us. Not Kiwi. No.

I nod in response to Mynah's ultimatum. "It will be taken care of." A vague response. Either Lucky Strike will take care of Nuport himself, or I will. I'm not above breaking a truce, especially when I have the advantage. But not here or now. I'm not going to waste our deaths. The girl rejects my offer to join us. So be it. We are halfway to the exit when Helix storms over to Lucky Strike and lashes out at him. I look back in her direction. If she really is the chosen one, she won't die tonight. Then I leave.

Litch,

You exit before the Sippians and Kestrel hugs Mynah before you take the stairs out toward your jet skis. You ride out under the stars, zipping away so the spray hides Mynah's grief.

Some tiny part of me, perhaps one of the Whispers relegated to the sidelines, tells me I should be grateful Lucky didn't strike me back, but the louder voice, for once my own, wails grief and wind-whipped fury.

"Do you really think our deal is still on after that?" I cross my arms, perhaps keeping myself from slapping him again. I shouldn't push my luck. "I took a hand. You took a life." Not just a life, Kiwi's life, and he's still back there, all alone now that the chicken-hearted Talons have fled the coop. "No." I turn to head back to the bar, for a flash still expecting to see Kiwi standing there filling glasses. It is a fresh strike of lighting across a seething, suffering sky.

The Whispers’ alarm in my mind mirrors my own sharp cry as Lucky yanks me back and I fall to the floor, scraping my elbow and bruising a knee trying to catch myself. Scalp burning, body aching, I’m surprised to find a comfort in the clutches of pain, a release in recognizing what I feel inside manifested outside.

As Bristol reaches for me, Sippians moving like the tide to sweep everything around them away, it dawns on me with stark certainty that I am as trapped with the Sippians as I am trapped in a world without Kiwi. All my confidence in the control I thought I’d created - over my life, my circumstances, even the Whispers - vanishes in a puff of smoke. I’m a life raft in a sea full of freighters and fighters. It is both my sole purpose and all I can do to keep myself above the waves. Failing that, I’m altogether useless.

I push myself to stand again above the storm, avoiding Bristol’s eyes - and Regal’s - as I lower my gaze to the heels of the Sippian in front of me and give myself up to the strength of their current, one foot in front of the other, leaving Kiwi behind the bar for the night one last time.

End Scene