Dawn Chorus By Willa Shakespeare (written with Hafren's prior permission as a sequel to Silent Night ) |
| The birds
are singing again. You open your eyes, and get up, automatically silencing
the alarm before it can sound. As usual, no one talks to you when you leave
your assigned tent and go to the pre-fab plastic shelter where equally pre-fabricated
meals are served. They used to try, but you put a stop to that in fairly short order. You weren't blamed for failing Blake's idiotic loyalty test, but rather praised for the way you'd stood over his body, waiting to be shot. As if that made any sense. Blake hadn't praised, though. He had merely stood up, wiped off the stage blood and stared right through you, before declaring that you could either stay or go, it didn't matter because they were abandoning this base and moving into the forest until the Federation observers had gone. That, without saying it in so many words, you didn't matter. Blake didn't think you were a hero. Neither did Vila, or any of your crew. They all expected you to go, so you stayed. After all, you haven't a ship and the few ships that are allowed past Gauda Prime's blockade are all too well-guarded for a single man to appropriate. And no one will follow you now. Not that you ever wanted them. Not that you ever wanted anyone. Sometimes you needed... no, that was done and over with, long ago. Blake enters the shelter and takes his own meal, nods at you, then comes over for the daily interrogation. Well, you have to admit, it's much more polite than that. With the courtesy of strangers, Blake inquires how you are progressing with your assigned tasks. You respond in kind, and Blake nods again, and goes to chat with another rebel. And you watch him, with the bile rising until you can't swallow, and you leave to return to your work. It's his turn. His turn to come to you. Why do you always have to come to him, why do you always have to be the one exposing your need? You had to follow him here and even now you can't bring yourself to leave. But you will. You will because you can't take much more of this. You work until dark, and then you return to your tent. You strip and lie down on the sleeping bag, and turn the camp light to dim. As always you zip the tent flap against vermin, but tonight you find you can't sleep until you get up and open it, tying it back just enough to let a thread of light escape. It's for the air, you tell yourself. And you wait. You're not really expecting anything, but a lingering sense of fairness impels you to make this one small effort. Hardly an effort at all. Easily unnoticed. Blake doesn't always take a last 'patrol' about the campsite before turning in. This way you won't be able to tell whether he saw and chose not to come, or that he never saw, and would have come. Finally you fall asleep, having decided that on the morrow you will beg, borrow or steal transport to the spaceport and from there, do whatever it takes to leave, to get away, to stop being Blake's shadow. You roll over at the sound, muzzily identifying it first as an early-rising bird, and then, more correctly, as the sound of your tent flap zipping shut. You turn up the light, because you can't see his face clearly, and you need to. Need to know whether he's come to say goodby or... Your arms open automatically, and he's in your arms, and neither of you are quiet, and neither of you are making much sense. Later, much later, the birds wake you again, and looking down at the sleeping face beside you, for the first time, you understand why they sing. -- Willa Shakespeare---The Bawd of Avon |