YEAR OF DAMNATION
O. The Fens. January, 1938.

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A crack echoed through the tabular landscape, a momentary chaos in the still afternoon air. The breeze had that sharp sterileness of cold weather as it hit the back of Dion's throat; it bit at her nose and the pink apples of her cheeks with its prickly teeth.

     Sasha and Edora had broken the dinner hen wishbone. Sasha won—he always did—he knew to hike his pinky up to the joint and keep his feet planted, whereas Edora pressured the odds to lean toward her with pure will. The wishbone sat on the window sill for three days before it had dried out enough to be cracked, and every night after dinner she whispered threats of lending its splintered remains to the Babayka if it did not abide by her commands.

     But the Babayka was not real and Edora went stumbling back into the snow on the ground. Her footprints left small indents that glimmered in the sun and Sasha's breath swirled above his head into the empty blue tinged pale sky as he laughed at her; he said something that Dion could not hear and her attention was lost. The whole ordeal was quite barbaric, to rip the remnants of a helpless animal apart for something as stupid as luck.

     She turned on her heel, and the snow squeaked under her boot like the feral holler before an abrupt snap. Noises of the slaughterhouse followed her wherever she went.

     Ahead of her stood the house; a quaint carriage dwelling that stood at the edge of the world. Weeds disappeared under the thick blanket of snow that surrounded it, the flatlands spanned across forever and it cut the sky in half with a harsh, white line. It burned Dion's irises, stung her retinas. She cupped her hands around her eyes, squinting. Bronya and Tanis' cherub round faces peered through the yellowed curtains, their breath fanned across the glass of the window in short spurts as they watched past Dion.

     Baby Laika must have been sleeping; she could barely walk, and they did not own warm clothes small enough that they would not be slipping from their shoulders and tripping them with every step. Her own bare knuckles sheened pink with cold like strawberries that were not quite ripe yet.

     Nothing good came of the winter. The Fens became an empty void of muffled noise and bleached vision. It ate everything that lived and continued to eat, and eat, and eat until all the fleshy, biotic things became nothing but a distant memory until spring. Food ran thin, and the trek into town left Dion's ankles numb and throbbing against the frigid sleet. Father did not like this arrangement, but he came home from work after all of the shopkeepers had covered their windows and locked their doors and there was nothing he could do about it. Every day, he worked himself tired and draped himself over the sofa like a big, pot-bellied house cat until nightfall once he returned.

     Father was a strange man who had strange habits, but he said Dion was a strange girl as well so she supposed she was a pot calling the kettle black. Recently, his mousy brown hair had begun to recede.  She was not meant to find this funny because her father was stressed but she did anyway.

     He and Mother did not behave like the parents of the protagonists in her stories; she had not a leader-type bone in her body—quite the opposite, really—so, there had been no reason to nurture traits that she simply lacked, unlike the average protagonist. Despite it, Dion found the set precedent harrowing. Her mother often left half-boiled eggs on the stove when her friend, Mr. Simenov, arrived. They talked about things like war and money and Sasha's school grades—adult humdrum. She did not mind that man, she supposed; he brought her fascinating muggle books that made her question the existence of things, as well as textbooks from his time at Koldovstoretz.

     The solid top layer of snow crunched as she walked; Dion's fingers grazed the rough stone wall of the house while she circled around to her mother's window. She stopped beneath it and stood on the tips of her toes, pushing up the sleeves of her father's wool coat to her elbows to show parts of Sasha's old fleece from when he was a child. Her arms extended and her fingers gripped the frame of the window, flakes of white paint unstuck from it in tiny flurries underneath her digits. What an ugly, stupid house.

     Her chin barely surpassed her hands when she lifted it to get a better view; Mother never let Dion or her siblings into her room. Curiosity. Dead cat. Certainly, if fate ruled it so.

     Dion could see the top of her mother's head nodding along, golden blonde flyaways curled upwards from the crown of plaits she always wore, Mr. Simenov sat beside her. The crown of his head looked like the inside of a clam shell, with hair so fair that it almost looked white. She only knew it grew out of his head that way because he was far too young to have gone all silvery white already and Dion's hair grew the same way.

     In a swift movement, her collar tightened around her throat and she stumbled back into the warm torso of Sasha. He had pulled her back by the scruff of her clothing and her feet tripped over each other in an attempt to regain her stability.

     "Don't go around snooping," he remarked out of the corner of his mouth. "You ain't gonna like what you find."

     Like a hint of spring, wheat coloured curls poked out from beneath Sasha's newsboy cap. He stared at her; rarely did he smile at home. When he did, his grin tugged sideways like their father, but it did not quite fit his face right—his face favoured their mother's appearance. Thin, gauzy features that were upturned and sharp; elfish, even. Dion thought she resembled Sasha the most out of her siblings, or would when she grew older. Edora was much too simple looking to compare, with a round face and bluntly cut brown hair that resembled a shade similar to their father's; the next two were the same, but Baby Laika had golden hair like Sasha and their mother.

     "You hear me?" he repeated, flicking her head with his cold, exposed fingers. "You won't like it."

     She covered her forehead and glared at him, rubbing the sore spot between her eyes in circles with her middle and ring finger.

     "Высказывайтесь." (Speak.)

     Dion turned her head away. He dropped it like he usually did.

     "Professors said I'm gonna make a fine Curse-Breaker, y'know." Sasha trailed off with a huff and looked over the horizon, expression glazed with something unreadable.

     He shut one eye, blinded by the snow, and the corner of his mouth opened and tweaked up. The look on his face struck her the same as the posters of sailors that lined the windows of muggle shops that said The best life for a man... in bold text. "A fine, fine Curse-Breaker. Oodles of money, I heard. You won't see much of me after that."

     Her lips shifted to a frown and she followed his gaze into the distance. Everything staggered to a stop, nothing moved and it was deafening; their house truly stood at the edge of all things living. If she ran far enough, it seemed like she would plummet right off of the Earth.

     "Hope they don't put too much pressure on you, being my sister and all." He only had four O.W.L.s—to be fair, his friend (who Dion met once in passing over Sasha's summer break) only managed two. "Can't say it'll be easy... but, I feel something. величия. Do you feel it?" (Greatness.)

       Greatness came out in a breath that haunted and it was Sasha's turn to watch as Dion stared blankly into the white void. Her ears buzzed with the deafening silence and she did not think she had a reaction suitable for what he said. All she heard was you're not like us and she had no argument to counter it. The bitter air stung her lungs; her eyes stung; the tips of her nose, cheeks and fingers went numb a long time ago.

     So, she shut her eyes and inhaled a little deeper, letting the sting of cold spread through her insides. She had known, ever since she gained consciousness of herself, that she was different at her core as something fundamentally distinct. That the pieces of her human puzzle did not quite fit the same as everybody else.

     After the silence, he rubbed a hand over his face and sighed. "I wish you'd talk. Wish I knew what you were thinking."

       Stop looking at me like that. Her tongue twitched and the words she wanted to say never came to her throat.

     "It's fine, y'know? Not your fault. Not your fault one bit."

     In the distance, a hare bolted out from the line that separated the sky and the snow. It staggered left and right, its hind leg flailed meekly behind it, injured. A bird flew overhead a bit further away—a buzzard, maybe. Dion watched them with great intrigue.

     "It's—I dunno."

     She imagined the buzzard, eyes narrowed in complete tunnel vision, solely focused on the hare as it ran. It did not need to fight so hard, it was already wounded, but it liked to watch it run like all of the other hares it had ripped apart. It loved the chase.

     "I dunno." He sighed again. "I dunno. Nevermind. I'm talking to myself."

     The hare was different; it knew nothing of emotion before it reached this point. Fighting for its existence, it finally knew dread in the most primitive form; the moments that forbade its life before everything faded to a close. Dion wondered if it knew hatred and disgust, if it felt anything of other primal forces. She wondered if it knew love. The gentlest touch of a hug or the bellowing laughter that followed it. She reasoned that it did not, that it knew only terror and the monotonous life of wild prey: eat until you are eaten.

     The buzzard nosedived into the hare like a stray bullet. It backed up and flapped twice, then dove into it again, talons out.

       How terrible. A fragile little creature that would die violently before it experienced love; Dion tried not to blink, worried she would miss even a second.

     Her eyes must have widened in a rapt way, as Sasha turned his attention away from the girl and focused on the scene ahead. Maybe he wanted to say something, maybe he did not; he observed the animals in awe as well.

     The hare lifted its head up to the sky, and she saw its face. Its beady little marble eyes stared into the vacant sky. The sun sat plainly in the center like nothing more than a pale yellow splotch on white cotton. It looked like it was looking for something—maybe God. Maybe a hare-God, or Mother Nature. Whatever it was, for the first time, it saw the beauty of life. Dion could see it in its eyes.

     And in a second, she took off running after them.

     Sasha cried out for her and Dion never looked back. Her knobby knees made for poor stability as she pumped her legs, the heavy clothes that did not fit her weighed her down, but she kept running, like the days she spent chasing Bronya through the vast wheat fields. Each slam of her foot against the frozen ground reverberated throughout her body, her heart pumped in her ears, and her lungs worked themselves tired. When she was sure the buzzard would hear her—and hear her loud enough that she appeared much bigger than she truly was—she began to shriek. Shrill and banshee, her shriek made the buzzard let out a gravely squawk and it flapped backwards. She put herself between the creatures and continued to shout, spreading her arms wide and turning her head away as it reeled back to attack again.

     The world slowed for a moment. Two seconds of bliss.

     In the distance, Sasha fumbled with his wand, cold hands stiff as a corpse's. A burst of red light shot from the tip and came hurdling for the buzzard. Dion felt a warmness in her chest, like the feeling of warm tea sliding down her throat after a cold morning—and then it all erupted.

     A blinding glow illuminated the area in a demi-circular blast, and the bird, and spell, ricocheted back; Sasha vaulted himself out of the spell's path and the buzzard doddered through the air, retreating into the heights of the sky with another squawk. Dion's chest rose and fell quickly, in sharp spikes, and she slowly dropped her arms as she opened her eyes. The land remained unmoved, unbothered, and she wondered if she had done anything at all, as nothing looked a hair out of place.

     She turned around and looked at the motionless animal, surrounded by a stain of crimson against the previously untouched white snow, light white and taupe fur stained a grisly, fresh red. Too late, Dion frowned.

     However, the wounds began to knit and fuse themselves together, like the women who wove baskets on their porches in town. The girl watched, eyes the size of saucers. It was not uncommon for children who had not yet attended school to be capable of using magic with their bare hands; she and her siblings did it nearly daily. But this? She had not seen anything like it. She heard Sasha's boots against the snow as he jogged over in a fright. Dion kept her fists clenched when he stopped beside her, the faint hairs on his face and neck stood on end.

     He fumbled over his words like he did his wand and all Dion could focus on was the hare as its chest peaked and fell like steep mountain ranges and, finally, it opened its eyes. For a moment it lied there, then, as Sasha paused to watch it as well—the hare got up and ran away into the milky nothingness winter of The Fens.

{ ༺✶ } i think if you gave baby dion a hot cheeto she would disintegrate like in the avengers movies. anyway... little freak weirdo child alert. hope you enjoyed :P votes and comments are appreciated

wc: 2434
girlpools  /  2023