Marsh, Kaddish

kaddish/content/004.tex

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-\hypertarget{systime-27847}{%
-\section*{systime 278+47}\label{systime-27847}}
+\hypertarget{systime-27850}{%
+\section*{systime 278+50\blfootnote{19 February, 2402}}\label{systime-27850}}
 
-I have rested, now, and thought yet more on my conversation yesterday. One thing I will say that Joseph and I spoke about is the moment of the attack. After all, he mentioned that the next day was Sunday --- First Day, as he called it, nerd that he is --- and so it was natural to all of him to meet, then, for worship.
+The conversation with Joseph seems to be lingering in my mind, caught up in there like some bit of grit between the molars.
 
-``I didn't notice anything had happened until nearly midnight,'' he said. ``I don't really do anything for New Years, after all. It's just another day for me. That's why I call it First Day rather than Sunday, right? It's the first day of the week, so why give it some special name?
+I suppose it is not so surprising, all told. The conversation was full of moments heated and kind. We spent some few hours talking together, and have both even sent each other letters after condensing some thoughts that we did not get a chance to share, as is our habit. I wrote to him some more of my thoughts on the moment of the Attack as I set down here in this journal.
 
-``I was just scrolling through the feeds, hunting down little artsy performances that people had recorded. Some sensorium plays, some comedy sketches. Just stupid, boring, late-night, turn-the-brain-off nonsense.
+We could simply meet up again for another chat, yes, but we have found joy in our letters, in the way they pile up in a folder as milestones of friendship.
 
-``I got a ping from Delta asking where Epsilon was and why he wasn't responding. We thought he was in a cone of silence or something, blocking incoming sensorium messages, but then we got a message saying that Mu was missing, along with one of our friends. The rest of the night was spent just panicked, sitting on the edge of the couch at home, trying to get in touch with as many people as I could.''
+But, as is evidenced by the content of the letter that I sent, my feelings on the time immediately following the Attack are sticking to me like burrs in fur. I have been ruminating over those minutes, hours, and days that followed. Those first confused minutes were so full of movement, overwhelming activity, that I could not keep up with them, no matter how hard I tried, and so I stopped trying, and thus those first few hours were spent trying to hold at bay the overwhelm. I alternated between keeping myself hidden away, curled under my desk and under a cone of silence with all outside contact cut off, and opening myself up to the world that I might better understand. I responded to queries ensuring that I was still alive --- Oh, But To Whom contacted me to ask if I and any of my up-trees were still around, as did Joseph --- and filled out a survey that was put under my nose for consideration. I contacted some friends of my own, and found that, to my luck, none were missing. I first scrolled the feeds and then promised myself that I would not scroll the feeds anymore.
 
-I told him at the time that my thoughts on that night were incomplete, and so now I am working through them here, that I may put them to words. I will write them down separately in a letter to send his way, as I have at times done.
+I remained under my desk for two days straight, responding to queries with the barest ping of acknowledgment. I did my best to forget my body. I tuned my sensorium down --- nearly off, at times --- and removed hunger and thirst. I did my best to forget my existence in such a world as this.
 
-There is a part of me that wishes I had experienced in my entirety the moment the world fell apart. This part of me is the same part that dreams so often of death. It is the part that looks at finality and cannot look away. It is the part that wonders: will I cry out, in my final moments? It is the part that remembers when Michelle quit with wonder and replays that moment over and over and over again, that tries to peer through remembered tears and see the wonder and joy on her face - faces, for, by then, she was so split in twain that she was two more often than she was one - to perk remembered ears that were also numbed by the horror of those around and listen for the way she said, ``Oh\ldots oh\ldots{}'' and then disappeared.
+Throughout, within me there was an anxiety growing.
 
-There is a part of me that wishes I had seen with my own eyes and heard with my own ears the moment the world fell apart. I was there, yes, and I survived, as this work attests, but I remember that moment only from the quiet of the basement and the eyes and ears of another instance.
+I had seen them disappear. I had seen people \emph{disappear.} I had seen those around me simply cease to be. I saw them, and then I did not see them. I remember their faces --- for my memory is as faultless as ever --- and that means that I remember their smiles, their joy, their little frustrations. I remember the barely contained tears of a woman who walked beside someone else. They were tears of disappointment, of a heart in the middle of breaking. I remember them unfallen, and then she was gone. I remember the unbridled joy of love, uncontained, unbounded, in the face of three lovers as the stood with their backs to a wall, postures subconsciously mirrored. I remember their excitement not at the night but at the presence of each other. I remember their glowing faces and then one of three was gone.
 
-She, too, survived, this other What Right Have I. She survived and merged down within minutes, but me, I was in the basement in the quiet of a coffee break with Rav From Whence and Rav Sorensen, and so all of her memories are mixed up with that prayerful quiet. I do not have undiluted memories of the end of the world.
+I remember seeing the broken-hearted one suddenly gone with no resolution.
 
-There was a rhythm to it all. There was a rhythm to the movement of debate, to the back-and-forth nature of arguing about the way that life flows, ought to slow. It was and ever has been a wrestling with God. With each other, yes, for there was back-and-forth, but it was ultimately a show, a performance that took the form of a debate in order to wrestle with God, with Adonai, Elohim, El-Shaddai?
+I remember the trio reduced to a panicked and searching duo.
 
-That is what we are, is it not? The people of Israel? Not just that ancient state, \emph{Medinat Israel,} gone these long centuries. Not the land, \emph{Eretz Yisrael.} They were the people, \emph{Am Yisrael,} the people of Israel who was Jacob. Jacob, who wrestles with God, yes?
+Within me there was an anxiety growing.
 
-And yet it is at times too close to that --- to actual wrestling --- for me. It was too contentious, too intense. I am, as I ever had been, brought along to provide the view of one who had read and reread and reread again all that I could, who had large chunks of the Tanakh memorized, who had buried herself in commentaries and commentaries on commentaries. I had memorized thousands of stories from the Talmud just as I had whole books from the Tanakh.
+What if this was not over? What if there were to be yet more disappearances? What if I were to disappear? What if I were to be here within the world and then, with nary a blink, not? What if Rav From Whence and I no longer got to make up and hold hands after our arguments? What if Joseph and I never again got to meet up and talk for hours? What if there were no more papers or books or missives signed ``What Right Have I of the Ode clade''? Who would notice? Who would think of me? Who would remember me? Joseph? From Whence? And how many others? Who thinks of me \emph{now?} Joseph? From Whence?
 
-And yet it was too much.
+Within me there was an anxiety growing and I needed out. I needed to be anything other than laying, curled, beneath my desk on a glorified dog bed, all senses turned to ten percent and hunger and thirst flipped off like a light switch. What if I disappeared and no one noticed? How long would pass?
 
-I had long ago requested that these discussions take place in one of the smaller rooms of the synagogue, that they take place among soft cushions and softer wall-hangings, take place around a circular table with no corners to fiddle with, take place with enough space that I could pace.
+And so I, without even bothering to stand up there in my room, slipped from the sim and was standing on the nearest arrival pad to The Bean Cycle.
 
-I needed that. It was not a want.
+I slowly ratcheted up my senses five percent at a time that I would not be immediately overwhelmed, and even then the sun shining overhead was so bright as to make my eyes water as they adjusted, to leave the tingle of a far-off sneeze in my sinuses, to leave the taste of pineapple on my tongue.
 
-I needed to be seen, to be perceived as an entire being who was an integral part of their ceaseless debates, and yet as someone who did not need \emph{accommodation.} I was an entire person, not most of a person for which they must find a way to fill in the rest. These were not accommodations that they needed to make for me to take part, they were a part of my participation that this might be some fuller experience, some work that still would have been complete if it had taken part in a noisy, brutalist hall or out in some park.
+The Bean Cycle was muted, whereas two nights prior it was lively. The lights were dimmer and yet clearer, though perhaps that was because it was midday. It was quieter, as though the ratchet of the cycles was shy, the hiss of steam wand and compressed air bashful, unwilling to be piercing. There were people there, still, but they were quiet; if they did speak, they did so in pairs and small knots, and more often than not under cones of silence that blocked out any sound coming from within.
 
-Could I take part in those places? Yes. Probably. Could I have provided a completed task that would stand up to the test of time? Probably. Ish.
+I had not considered any steps beyond being in this place, this place where others might be. Now, here I was, and there was something I was supposed to do. I had to do something. There was something I needed to do\ldots{}
 
-But could I provide insight that would shine with the sages if they would only do this in a place where I could pace among soft things, where I could fidget and tic, where my little chirps and yelps and twitches would be at least glossed over and at best taken as a sign --- a rainbow! A raven! A plague! --- that the topic had veered or become mired in stress rather than remaining within the soothing track that we had laid out for ourselves.
+I supposed if there was one thing one did in a coffee shop that was also a bike repair shop when one does not have a bike, it must be to order a coffee.
 
-From Whence Do I Call Out, my down-tree instance, was tightly in control of herself. She was more tightly in control than \emph{anyone} else I have had ever met, never mind just among the Odists.
+And yet, my voice had left me. I stood dumbly by the counter, and the tired-- no, \emph{exhausted} looking barista behind it, a woman whose skin was a joyous riot of tattoos and wrinkles, merely stared at me. The stalemate lasted nearly a minute before I realized the lock I had gotten myself in, and I lay my ears flat against my head. I brought my fist up to rub in a circle over my chest. My voice had left me and all I could do was apologize.
 
-I was sure that the True Name of yore had probably been yet more in control, and yet I had never met her. I had been no one. I \emph{was still} no one. I was that part of From Whence that needed out of the cage of control. I was the part of her that loathed the social interaction inherent in being a rabbi. I was the part of her that rankled when confronted with this desire to mask and thus appear a confident spiritual leader.
+``Uh.'' The woman seemed started to awareness, and with that awareness seemed to come some more complex emotion. She sniffed, turned, and called out, ``Hasher?''
 
-I was that part of her set free.
+Nonplussed, I watched as, without a further word, the barista and one of the bike mechanics switched places. She seamlessly picked up the work that this lithe, red-haired, red-bearded person had been working on, and they greeted me with a bow across the counter. ``Help you?''
 
-I was the part of her who could give up that life of leadership and sink down into the comfort of texts.
+I signed an apology once more, followed by, ``Do you sign?''
 
-I was the part of her that splashed about in that collection of neuroses that had been bundled up in Michelle Hadje, that collection of identities and desires that reached for ever more, the bits that had been left behind that had not been crushed to a fine powder by whatever forces within the Western Federation there were that had deemed us nobodies to have been transitively lost.
+``Oh! Yes!'' A bob of his fist accompanied this.
 
-``What Right Have I?''
+I sighed, then, in relief and cast a thankful gaze over to the woman who had swapped places with Hasher. She did not meet it.
 
-I squeaked and jumped at the sudden intrusion of words. ``Ah\ldots yes?''
+Hasher stomped a foot gently on the ground --- perhaps overloud for the room, but I could still feel the vibrations through the soles my feet, unclad as they were --- leading me to jump back to attention. I smiled sheepishly, signed, ``I can hear, just can't speak.''
 
-``You were chirping,'' my down-tree instance said to me, smiling. ``I was wondering if you had further thoughts, my dear.''
+``Gotcha.'' They continued to sign as they spoke. I made no move to stop them. ``What can I get you?''
 
-I shook my head, then bowed to From Whence. ``My apologies. No, my thoughts had wandered.''
+``May I please have a mocha with extra whipped cream?''
 
-``Do you think we have had enough of this topic, then?''
+They were already sliding over to the espresso machine as they called out, ``Coming right up.''
 
-I shrugged.
+Where was their energy coming from? He hopped to with such readiness that a part of me wondered whether they might be a construct, an automaton, a dream of a person built to act as a person might in the role of a barista, but otherwise made solely of dream-stuff in a way that we were not, as cladists.
 
-``A verbal response would help me better move forward one way or another.''
+But no, they had moved with an essential awkwardness that was so often left behind when oneirotects built up these constructs. They looked to me with curiosity and compassion. They looked excited, and for some very specific reason that was not just some attempt at customer service.
 
-``Ah, sorry.'' I shook my head again. ``No, ah\ldots{} Yes. I am sorry, Rav From Whence, Rav Sorensen. I think we have had enough of the topic.''
+I watched them as they worked, then, trying to puzzle out this little bit of reality after so many hours of mere surreality. They caught my eye at one point, smiled, and returned their gaze to their work. The smile lingered.
 
-Both of them sighed, nodded, and reached their arms up above their heads in unison to stretch. I hid a secret smile at the synchronicity.
+The resultant drink was nearly a sphere. The mug was a wide bowl of a cup, a hemisphere in its own right, and yet the mound of whipped cream atop was of nearly the same volume, a fist-sized mound of airy white netted by a drizzle of chocolate sauce.
 
-``Fair enough,'' From Whence said, pushing her paw up through the front portion of her mane and ruffling out the already mussed white fur there. ``I could do with a little bit of silence, honestly. Or fresh air. Or something.''
+This was not the fanciest, nor even largest, mocha that I had ever had. It was not the most whipped cream I had ever seen in one sitting. Nothing about it was special --- a hot drink in a cup with a mound of whipped cream.
 
-Erin nodded. ``Fresh air sounds good. We could start making our way up to the hilltop the long way around.''
+And yet, when Hasher set it down before me on the counter, I burst into tears.
 
-``Not the worst idea.''
+``Oh\ldots oh no,'' they mumbled and hurried around the corner of the bar, taking me gently by the elbow and guiding me over to the L-shaped couch in the corner of the coffee shop half of the building. Once I was seated, they ducked away to grab my mocha and set it on the low table nearby.
 
-I felt stymied. We were \emph{here,} though. We were talking. We were working. We were pounding our fists against the divine and begging it to provide for us some sense of greater truth. We were pushing our way through reality at a constant pace and so learning --- learning or refinement or perfection or whatever it was that we were doing --- ought to proceed at precisely that pace, not stopped by walking up the hill.
+It took longer than I care to admit for the storm to pass, and even then, there were false endings: I would stop crying and settle into sniffling and then some emotion that I did not have access to, could not feel directly, would wash over me like a wave, and I would be sent once more into wracking sobs.
 
-``What Right Have I?''
+It occurs to me, now that I think back on that moment, that I had cried so little until then. After those first confused tears, I lay, curled, beneath my desk and did nothing. I turned off as much input as I could for the vast majority of the time, and such often came with turning off as much output as I could, too. I stopped moving. I stopped eating and drinking. I never got around to venting emotions or shedding tears. I borrowed all of that from the future, and now that debt was being called due. Perhaps my voice had left me because it knew that if I were to speak, this would happen.
 
-I hid away any sullenness in my posture as I bowed to the two rabbis. Some small bit of masking did at times serve the purpose of merely letting me out of yet more interaction that I did not feel equipped to handle.
+And all the while, Hasher sat beside me, head bowed. They did not touch me, did not even talk to me, they simply sat beside me and let me work through this period without being alone. They witnessed this pain. They were present for it.
 
-``Very well,'' I said, and followed them out the door of this particular meeting room.
+\emph{If I were to disappear now,} I thought, \emph{if another wave of disappearances were to happen and claim me, at least Hasher would notice.}
 
-The cool air of the night was a blessing. I had not realized just how warm the room had gotten, not until provided with contrast. We stepped out into a garden --- one of my favorites within the sim and a large part of why I preferred this particular meeting room.
+It took nearly half an hour before I was first able to take a sip of my mocha, having thoroughly worn myself out and forked twice to ensure that I could breathe properly and was less of a mess.
 
-The cool air was a blessing, and the perpetually springtime scent of it a comfort. There was the sharp-sweet honeysuckle. There was the baked goods warmth of the day-closing dandelions. There was the floral chill of lilacs.
+The tears, though, lingered just on the horizon, or perhaps just below the surface, and so I leaned yet again on signing. I knew that if I spoke, I would fall to crying once more.
 
-The cool air was a blessing and the Jonah plant --- my most selfish of contributions to the sim --- was in full flush. When, at times, I was feeling particularly peaky, I would sit in the shade its leaves in the heat of the day, the shadows so deep as to not even be dappled, and then, knowing, by my weight on the bench beneath it, my presence, it would shortly wither away and I would be blasted by the full force of the sun, for even if it was not directly overhead, some trick of the glass on the buildings that formed the courtyard would ensure that this one location was always subject to those rays, and thus I would be confronted with the plight of Jonah --- poor, stupid Jonah --- who cared more about his comfort than the fate of a city so much larger than he.
+``This is very good.''
 
-I was called away from standing still, snout pointed up in the air to take in the scents, that I might follow From Whence and Erin up the hill, this time and two or three times more. I do not know why I was surprised that I needed a break in context, nor why both of my interlocutors had recognized such before I did. Such things will never cease to surprise me, though, and I suppose one upside to this is that I will forever have reason to be thankful for.
+Hasher smiled. ``Are you okay now?''
 
-We wove our way up to the synagogue the long way around, never once entering a building, for there was a path, if you knew it, that let you go the whole way outdoors. You would step from this courtyard to that following some colonnaded walk or exposed breezeway, climbing stairs and ramps, walking through some ivy-shaded alley where one might touch the walls of the buildings to either side with both paws outstretched.
+``No, not really.''
 
-The narrowest of these was the final path around the side of the synagogue itself, an entry to that alleyway that was hidden by some clever trick of the architecture and light. Here, one might even be tempted to turn sideways and edge, crablike, down the path, so close together were the buildings.
+``I do not think anyone is.'' He looked over to the other half of the shop. ``Cosmia hasn't said anything other than names these last two days. She lost a few friends, and from her perspective, she lost whole portions of herself. I have told her to take off every time she comes in. I can just work both sides, right? But she just shakes her head and stays, and whispers all of these names.''
 
-And at last we stood outside the front entrance, the three of us simply breathing deep of the night air --- midnight not far off, now, and the sounds of bustle nearby from those preparing for the celebration. The exertion of the climb lingered with us, and to stop and stand still was a quiet comfort as the chill of the night began to fully set in.
+I thought about this. I thought about myself. I set these two ideas of people next each other and compared them side by side. I looked over to Cosmia, who had set her hands on the workbench and bowed her head, shoulders hunched, mumbling to herself.
 
-``Do you think\ldots{} ah, that is, shall I perhaps go get us some coffees? Some drinks? We can have a little bit of warmth, yes?''
+``Maybe she needs the names heard by someone other than just herself.''
 
-Both Rav Sorenson and Rav From Whence turned their smiles upon me from where they had been before pointed up to the stars.
+Returned his gaze to me, curious. ``Did you lose anyone?''
 
-``That would be lovely, my dear,'' From Whence said.
+``No.~Yes. I do not know. No one I know, so many that I did not.'' I could feel that talking --- even signing --- about this was shoving me towards yet more tears, but what else was there to talk about? Nothing. Would I talk about the coffee more? Would I talk about my work? Would I talk about what my plans were for the coming day? Week? Month? The tears returned, and I signed clumsily, hastily. ``Everyone always says we have three deaths: the last breath, burial, and the last time a name is spoken. If Cosmia is reciting the names of ones who never even had the chance to get buried, then maybe she is doing a mitzvah. But who speaks the names of us? I was hiding and then I was worried I would disappear and so I came here so that if I \emph{did,} at least someone would notice, but what if everyone here disappears, too? What if Lagrange goes down again? Will someone speak all of our names? How long will God forget us? Sorry. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.''
 
-``Why not?'' Erin's smile grew all the brighter. ``Though a hot chocolate will do for me, I think.''
+At my outburst, Hasher had jolted back, though even as they relaxed their posture, their expression remained dire, and only got more so as I continued on and on past the point where I was staying anything sensible.
 
-I nodded, bowed, and forked.
+I drew my feet up onto the couch with me and hugged around my knees. I could not sign another apology like that, and counted it as a blessing. I was made of apologies already. I was a being of `sorry'.
 
-It was What Right Have I\#Coffee who stepped to Infinite Café, arriving on one of the designated transportation pads, one of those rectangles tiled in a gently glowing white where all collision was turned off, and from there stepped out into the comfortably cool air of the night, warmer than that of Beth Tikvah.
+After a moment of gathering themself, of wiping their nose on their sleeve, they signed, ``What's your name?''
 
-This was notable in part because it was never night in Infinite Café. Or, rather, it was only night twice a year: New Year's Eve and Secession Day night --- eve and night by systime, which I suppose must be UTC or some similar standard --- and then only for the fireworks. When your entire world is a thin ribbon of land, a literal ring road surrounding a bright star, the meaning of `night' shifts.
+The prospect of spelling out my name exhausted me, a fact that always irked me in turn. I was so tired. I was so tired. I swallowed down yet more tears and ick, took a breath, and croaked, ``What Right Have I.''
 
-And so here they were, New Year's eve and it was well and truly night on this road that ran who knew how many kilometers long, a road lined on either side by so, so many cafés and coffee shops and delightful little stalls offering coffee and little treats. Above, no moon shone, but instead there were countless strings of fairy lights, strung with no discernible pattern, casting a warm glow on those below.
+They opened their mouth to say something, hesitated, and their expression grew distant as, I guessed, they checked the perisystem directory. ``Ode clade?''
 
-It was well and truly night, and yet it was still busy. Crowds meandered under fairy lights and a dark sky that craved the diamond scars of fireworks etched across it. It begged for the blossoming lights that were promised by the evening.
+I nodded.
 
-Half an hour away.
+``Well, What Right Have I of the Ode clade, I'll be sure to remember your name,'' they said.
 
-The fairy lights drew a crazed pattern above her, etching dotted lines across the black of night. \#Coffee stood for some time, simply staring up to them, trying to draw constellations out of linear groupings of stars. There were more letters than there were animals, given so many straight lines, and so she spent some time trying to spell out words.
-
-Sweet scents still rode in her nostrils and clung to her fur. The cool of the night, just shy of chilly, still filled her body. The joy of the work contrasted still beautifully with the joy of the break and the re-grounding that followed. She was in love, at that moment, with the world, and it felt like the world was in love with her.
-
-There was time to feel this sensation. Time to tune down her hearing to lower the noise of the crowds to something a little more tolerable, and revel in the fact that other people exist, that this world was full of joy.
-
-Twenty minutes away.
-
-Coffee, though. That is why she was here. Warm drinks to stave off the slight chill of the hilltop at Beth Tikvah.
-
-She wandered down the path that was Infinite Café, eyes scanning the storefronts --- or perhaps store-backs, as many of them were --- until one caught her eye.
-
-The Bean Cycle advertised itself with a chaotic pile of bicycles bolted to the wall. It looked like ivy of some sort, or a sort of ooze that threatened to overtake the building itself. Bicycles, wheels, frames, gears and chains, all bolted to the wall or to each other, climbing up beside a door and then oozing up over the low roof.
-
-Why not?
-
-She stepped inside and immediately turned her hearing down further, shutting out the rattle-clatter of a smattering of cyclists riding stationary on sets of rollers before a scoreboard, the whine-howl of steam wands frothing milk, and the dull chatter of those who spoke over it. Halogen lights shone above, at once too bright and not bright enough.
-
-It was overstimulating, and yet all the more quaint and charming for it.
-
-Ordering the drinks --- a hot chocolate and two mochas with extra whipped cream --- went smoothly, and she even let herself be talked into three of ``the best croissants in this sim'', because why not. She was riding along joy, now, like a train on rails, letting it carry her forward.
-
-This --- not the coffee shop, not the noise, but her night, the debate and the walk, existing in the world --- was her joy. It was her calling in life to wrap herself up in the stories of old and then view the world through them like a kaleidoscope that she might then hold up a mirror to it through the lens of interpretation.
-
-Her drinks and croissants were set into a cardboard drink caddy, and at last she was free to step back out into the night air, away from the noise of the bikes and steam wands and halogen lights.
-
-Fifteen minutes away.
-
-Fifteen minutes away and, of a sudden, the crowd was reduced. Many of those who had once stood before her, this instance of me, in knots and gaggles of friends were simply not there. Not all; nor, perhaps, even most. Just many sudden absences.
-
-There was a shout that fell to a murmur, and which then rose to a quiet roar, a wash of sound that led What Right Have I\#Coffee to set her tray of cups and treats on the ground beside her and cover her ears in a rush as she stood outside of a coffee shop. She hurried to turn down her hearing the down yet further and stifled a yelp, a squeak, a jerk of the head.
-
-The words that made it through the pillowy softness of a sense running at 10\% were shouts and cries of alarm. They were names hollered out, presumably those of people no longer present. They were wide-eyed growls begging to know what the fuck had just happened.
-
-Fourteen minutes away, and What Right Have I\#Coffee realized she could not take it all in. Not all of this. Not here. Tray abandoned, she quit to merge back down.
-
-And yet I was dealing with my own worries, then, for at fifteen minutes until midnight, a din arose at the top of the hill, some fifty meters away, and it was as we were making our way toward the noise when the merge from \#Coffee landed on my mind with a startling sense of urgency.
-
-I incorporated the memories without a second thought, and then bolted towards the top of the hill, leaving Ravs From Whence and Sorenson calling after me in my wake.
-
-The scene at the yard atop the hill was much the same as that at Infinite Café: names were called out. Disbelief and shock were expressed. Voices were tinged here with anger, there with fear.
-
-I stood at the edge of the yard and gaped, where I was soon joined by the other two.
-
-I remember little else from that night. Or I remember it, but through a dream-fog of panic.
-
-I remember how Rav From Whence sprung immediately into action --- or, rather, how she was already a whirlwind of motion and emotion, there in the thick of it all, and how the instance beside me merged down as soon as she saw what was happening, and I remember how Rav Sorenson dashed into help. The both of them had soon forked several times over and were corralling the crowd into knots of smaller groups that they might speak more easily with them, working on the level of family, perhaps, or friend-group.
-
-I remember how I stood once more, just as What Right Have I\#Coffee had, gawking at the pandemonium
-
-I remember the first wail --- the first recognition of loss and the first wail of despair and pain that rang out into the night --- and the bright arc of a firework soaring into the sky, bursting, and then the sudden disappearance as the show was canceled.
-
-I remember hearing the wail, seeing the sparks and then sudden dark, and then stepping to my room to hide under my desk, letting flow tears of confusion, frustration, and terror.
+I buried my face against my knees, snout tucked against my thighs.