Rotting_Ink
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Starling Knight- Burial
🕑 Added 2024-10-19 01:59:10 +0000 UTCThey hated the ocean. It was impossible for them to tell how much time had passed, even though they knew they were supposed to look at the stars and... Guess? The only thing that warned them of the passage of time was the increasing worry on the Captain's face, and the number of ship hands being confined to quarters.
That, and the amount of times Starling would overheard the Captain and their mother arguing, as they sat outside their shared room. Going from reassuring words to near shouting matches, only quietened whenever their mother would burst into tears, sobbing and unable to stop the wretched, painful breaths she had to take. But, even behind doors, they understood.
Their father had been dead for 6 weeks. For 3 of those weeks, they had been at sea. For a week, there had been signs of plague on board, particularly in the cargo hold. Where their father had lay, stiff, his own coffin side by side to another corpse. Someone’s niece who flung herself off a building at the prospect of an arranged marriage and her remains was being shipped back, her head in a different box to her body.
The uncle had already happily agreed to toss her own corpse to the sea, after a small service. Starling’s mother was the one who was refusing to have her husband buried in the water. Starling privately thought that he’d have preferred to be buried at home. Their actual home. They already had a burial plot ready, a family mausoleum just outside their house. He wasn’t supposed to be being shipped back to England, to the family he willingly left behind, the people he made sure would never meet Starling. But they had nothing. But they did have something.
Starling had watched other women in Egypt bury their husbands, and carry on. Ones with no family except a few children, taking over businesses, becoming the heads of their family. Their own mother wasn’t apparently able to fathom it. No, she had written home to the family she married into, and got a response back. They were sad that Andras was dead. They would love for her to come back and be with the family. They were excited to meet Starling.
And now here they were, standing by the man who would have wanted to be buried underneath the dark dirt and soft sand, surrounded by the people he made his own family. But then again, as Starling was slowly coming to accept, life was cruel. He wasn’t supposed to die. It was before his time. Their cousin's father died only when she turned 45. Starling was just 15. They were supposed to have at least three more decades.
If life was good, if being alive was fair, then their father wouldn’t have had a fit, standing among the oranges he was so proud of. He would have been found instantly, instead of hours later. He’d have survived.
If not that, then he’d be buried at their home. Then their mother would take over. She knew how to. Starling knew how to. They’d carry on selling fruits, they’d carry on watching Starling discover that the world bent to the wills of their fingers, helping life bloom. Helping death shrivel.
But no. Worst of all, Starling couldn’t get mad at the world for the fact that they had wrapped their father in a shroud made from bed linens. Nor that they knew this was the safest way. They’d seen plague victims.
They could either hold onto their father and die with him before they ever reached the shores of England. Or let his body go now, and reach their new life… Alive. And nothing else. Just alive.
So, as their mother wailed, uncaring of the eyes of the boat hands staring at the disgusting display, half of them horrified at the sight of this woman, undone, the other half pitying. Starling endured the stares. They already knew it would get worse when they arrived at their relatives. A part of them felt guilty, for being so selfish and thinking of the future, even when half of them mourned him.
Starling was selfish, they decided. Starling was watching their father being hefted up, wrapped shoddily in borrowed fabric, to be lowered into cold, gray waters, and while half of them cried out, the other half shook in terror. Of what was to come.
They were one of Osiris’ Followers in Egypt. Once a week they had gone to spend the whole day with the others with their abilities, to be taught, to be taken care of, to be reassured that their power was a blessing, of Old, but also of New. They’d see other classes in passing, as they walked through the halls of tile and stone. People urging plants to grow, helpers of Renenutet, people who could shape light, illusions, Lovers of Khonsu. Creators of Geb, Nut, Tefnut, Wadjet all showed newcomers their control over the elements. Guardians would let blood flow down their arms, to form crystallized weapons in their palms.
There were also those, who willingly wielded the powers of Apep, to reinforce Ma’at. Seen as the most powerful, most of these Wielders came forward, to reveal Apep’s influence had come to them, and all would be taken in, creatures hanging off their clothes or curled around them, eyes staring and flicking around. They even talked to one of these creatures. It was perfectly polite.
Starling’s mother always quietly scoffed at what Starling was taught and would come home with. She often talked about how it was a shame that the Kingdom was forced from the shores of Egypt, taking with the teachings of the Basilica, the power, the culture that the country needed. It was the only thing their parents fought about. Their father happily lived in Egypt before going to marry their mother, watching as they purged every influence from the hold the small island had over them, including reintroducing their old beliefs, to wash out the ones imposed.
They privately agreed with their father.
Because of what was to come for them now. They knew that it wouldn’t be long before their relatives would send them off to the Scholars and Keepers of the Basilica, to be Tagged, to be forced to unlearn how they saw the world. They already knew that the Sirelings of the Gods were known as Witches, people to be hidden away or used. They knew that instead of learning in cool rooms, side by side with other children, they’d be confined to the classroom. Then the workplace, if they didn’t want to study.
So, as they watched their father sink down, swallowed by dark waters, their mother hanging onto their shoulder and sobbing, they wished they could sink wholly into their grief. To think of nothing but their father, lost to an abyss of wet waters, instead of themself.
Their mother was eventually escorted back to her room, to be given tea and made to sleep. The Captain, however, put a hand on Starling’s shoulder and escorted them to his cabin. He prepared an opium pipe, as he talked about his condolences, explaining, again, that he wished there was another way, but the threat of plague was simply too great.
Then he pulled on the pipe. His eyes glazed. He offered it to Starling.
They took a moment… Then put it to their lips.
Years later, when interrogated by their Handler, the one who personally branded Starling upon their arrival to the Conservatory of Natural Research and Sciences, about their use of Opium and other “Instruments of Excess”, they might have admitted that they shouldn’t have taken that first taste. Shouldn’t have let the haze sink over them, to dull the edges that pierced and cut their insides. They enjoyed a nice evening, getting to talk about their father without the pain in their heart, drinking bad beer and listening to tales of the Sea, how the Captain was sure that something lurked in the deep.
That night was the best sleep they had since their father’s death, curled up on their bunk as their mother cried, even in her sleep.
Maybe they shouldn’t have become so reliant on it, their own personal escape made from poppies, but then again, maybe their father shouldn’t have died, choking on his own breath, among his oranges. Life was unfair. Starling had learnt how to deal with it.
Comments
Kat Voight
The universe you've built is so impressive
