Appellere, "drive to" or "come ashore"

by Lise

I: Here begins the chapters of 'coming forth by day' and of the songs of praise and glorifying, and of coming forth from and of going into the glorious Neter-khurt in the beautiful Amenta; to be said on the say of burial: going in after coming forth.

"Osiris Ani, Osiris the scribe Ani, saith: 'Homage to the, O bull of Amenta, Thoth the king of eternity is with me. I am the gret god in the boat of the Sun, I have fought for thee. I am one of the gods, those holy princes who make Osiris to be victorious over his enemeis on the day of weighing of words."

I.
~

NATE

*

The days are long and endless, and ever since Bobby killed himself, things haven't been the same.

I suppose everyone misses someone. He wasn't tough enough to deal with it.

World's End, close to six. Not many patrons, not many people milling around. There are some ashes on the stone slab by the door, smell like burned flesh. I don't know how many times I've told Franklin to keep the damned tourists from leaving offerings at the threshold of a bar not even clean enough to pass a Health Inspection.

Still. The dirty granite block, a foot in all directions and a weathered top, keeps being the receptacle for little pieces of animal fat and hopeful prayers. Someone set up a shrine, with the cute little slogan, 'have a hope, leave a hope' and a little smiley face. I wouldn't put it past Franklin to have come up with it himself, except it's too macabre.

Superstition's running high these days, because of a lot of things, I'm sure-- a lot of very obvious things. No one has to ask why people wear their socks backwards or snap before they step over a sideways rock, or talk to the trees before picking the fruit...

They only have to look at Franklin, and then imagine him with no head. That'll do it. Most of these people wouldn't survive.

I look around, and slip a coffee bean on top of the rock before opening the door.

We can use all the luck we can get.

Kitty's in the bar, drinking, reading a newspaper, and fiddling with a circuit board. It looks worse than the train wreck from last week, and less likely to be put back together. Her eyes are tired, and squinting. This isn't going to go well.

"Kitty?"

She looks up, and already I can tell she hasn't slept well. Franklin told me, of course, but even without that, it's obvious. "Yeah?"

I frown. "Destiny wants to talk to you."

She goes back to staring at her circuits, and swallows a big gulp out of the plastic mug in her hand. It has a big happy duck on it, with the words, 'have a ducky day!' on it. I think Franklin made it for Mikhail a while back, when he was still a scared child not knowing where he was or what his powers were. I sit down. "Look, Kitty."

"No."

I look up. "What?"

She slams the cup back on the table, empty, and stands up, equipment in hand and a scowl just for me. "No, Nate. I will not see the reasonable side of this. She hasn't been here two days. She-- she. I."

I stay seated, and absently point the handle of her mug north-- what we think is north, anyway. What we call north. "She's going to be useful."

Her hands clench. "I know."

"This isn't--"

She walks away, slapping the top of the doorframe with a soft 'thud' before exiting. It's an old habit; most of the residents here have picked it up off someone. I think it was Domino, from the first time she entered the bar, grinning about past lives. God knows where she got it. Most of the habits everyone has come from the last few minutes before a shift put us here, those seconds before they found themselves in safety.

I sigh, and slap the doorframe myself, before going to find Dom. There's beer to drink, and I've done my part between Kit and Adler.

~

DOMINO

*

Monday night. Drunk. Nate's ranting about the possibilities of ever completing his grand destiny, slouched over a table. A minute ago, he was almost sick on the piano.

I think the Ororo that wandered through here hit him hard. I saw a coffee bean at the altar and everything.

African goddesses, I gotta say. I'll never understand'em. She whirled through here, more elemental than human, eyes crackling fire and the divine. She stayed for a drink, blessed our waters, and once we'd fallen asleep, she moved on without a trace.

Nate woke up, and yelled at me for half an hour.

See, I didn't see madness within her. Franklin, he didn't feel very much madness within her. The sands whirled around her, and the rain came, and she fertilized the crops we struggle to plant-- but she wasn't fucked up in the head. Didn't seem it. Spoke alright. Drank, ate, was regal-- more regal than I remember Storm being.

She was a true goddess, though. She never came out of Africa, ruled there with temples and crops and thousands upon thousands of people worshipping her, while she brought the weather and the rain and the vengeance upon their masters. She layed a hand on my stomach, and whispered a blessing there, too. Nate watched, and scowled, read her mind easily. She had nothing to hide; wore her god-hood as a badge. She was a protector. Nate saw her entire life story within the first few seconds of her visit.

But he didn't see madness. Not the shift-kind.

She gave us no indication whatsoever why she wanted to run away. She walked into this place, her own feet bare, tiara gleaming in the sun. People didn't know how to take her. There was a ritual of welcome -- there always is, though normally it's just a handshake or a threat of death should the visitor threaten this place. Lorna made a special dinner, sacrificial feast. We brought in a buffalo from the hunt, and skinned it, roasted it, and she told us the land needed a mother.

Whirled out, same goddamned winds of fate that brought her here, even after Nate explained what was going on.

No madness, they say. Fuck that. She believed in herself way too much to be sane and sober. I can stare at Nate, feel him ranting, feel him queasy with the moonshine in his gut, and I see the same thing. He built all of this, to believe in.

African goddesses aside, it's a good night. I remember some good times, we drink some good things.

We get into an argument about the possibility that Ororo might have been the one to protect Africa from the whirlwind. Everyone eventually agrees with me when I explain what I know of the African goddess figures and how easily Storm might have used those beliefs.

Nate still blames himself for letting her leave, but he doesn't know how goddesses would be treated-- he doesn't know what she expects from the world.

She probably feels it her responsibility to heal the earth.

Like Nate.

And I know all this history, I can tell them these things, because when I was in college, I took a class on the mythologies of different cultures. It included their beliefs on the afterlife, the end of the world. The Norse god, Loki, would drive a boat, raised by a huge snake thing, carrying the dead.

I wasn't there for the second battle of the Twelve.

Knowing what I do now, I bet it looked like that.

~

LORNA

*

It's morning-- the sky is grey. Franklin controls our weather. The grain must need water.

He expects me to want to fight. I'm out in the greenhouse, like always, watering the tomatoes and talking to the basil plants he managed to get from some abandoned spice mine. Basil grows well, and it helps flavor the food.

Basil water-buffalo. Basil duck. Citrus fruits are too hard to keep alive here-- they seem to absorb some of the negativity into their rinds and discolor the fruit. Mikail tried one, before we knew, and ended up sick for a week.

He ingested the fruit of the end; took into his body tainted food, food that knows the world is dying. A sick stomach was the consequence-- I consider him lucky.

These tomatoes are withering on the vine; they refuse to ripen properly. Green tomatos can be unpleasant. The peas and beans, with their hard, resisting shells, keep out the negativity as best they can. And Franklin's apple tree is fine.

We call them apples, though they are blue.

Right before Nate found me, I was laying in a field of flowers, smelling fresh orchids, and watching meteors rain down on the town not ten miles away.

Nate pulled me back, pulled me free, as the world crumbled. But the last thing I saw of that world was a massive chunk of stone digging huge rivets in the earth.

And I thought, good. Good, that's done. Someone knows what's happening. Good.

A thousand people lived in that town. And those rocks were made of metals; Nathan must have thought I was sick.

I don't remember guilt. I remember the smell of those flowers.

~*~

KITTY

*

"Nate told me that you wanted to speak with me."

Formal, ritualized words. I have to keep calm, forget the look in Remy's eyes. "Well?"

I didn't mean to be that sharp.

She looks up from shelling peas-- Irene Adler, gardening. I don't know what to think. Part of me whispers, 'she never showed you this.' I hold out a pad of paper.

As she takes it, she smiles a little. [I was hoping to ask you more about what you weren't saying this morning.]

I blink, sit down and crossed my legs under me. "I wasn't holding anything back."

She tried to grin, but it was wavery. [That much was apparent. I still don't understand what's made you angry.]

I sigh. I clench my fists. I remember a time when I trusted Jean, and then absently finger the little case around my neck. "To understand it, you would have to be someone you're not."

[Someone you wish I had been.]

"I--" I laugh, and feel sick to my stomach. "Maybe. I think so." Getting more comfortable on the ground, I pick up a pea and shell it, feel a little better. Get another one, snap, flick, and in the bowl.

We sit there for a minute, and then she hesitates, writes, [You were hysterical before. You aren't now.]

"No, no I'm not. I'm shelling peas."

[Who--] She crosses it out, shrugs and smiles at me apologetically. Her face is old, wrinkled, and I'd guess she's about sixty. She must be from a different time, maybe the seventies. Maybe she was born later. I don't know. She has brown pants and a loose sweater, boots on. I have the same. We look similar-- two generations of women.

I know what she was going to ask me. "Who do I wish you were?" She hesitates again, and nods. Softly, I reply, "Someone with the answers."

Another pea flies into the bowl from my hands, and I barely realize that we almost have enough for the six of us for dinner. She picks up the pencil stub again, and it's a little shaky in her hand. I don't know whether that's from age or cold or shock and trauma. Perhaps she has MS, or an alien virus. --maybe it's fear. The tip is scratchy, and I can hear people yelling, and a few laughing, and Nate grumbling about not having something.

I look down, and the paper says, [You were accusing me of hiding something.]

"I-- yes." I should apologize, but as soon as the thought enters my mind, bile rises. "It's a long story."

Her handwriting is small and a little cramped; I squint to make it out. [We have time.]

~

FRANKLIN

*

I find myself whistling in strange places, nowadays. While I'm working, while I'm gardening. While I'm fixing the roof on World's End. I wish I could say I whistle to keep away the spirits, but really, I think I just like to hear some noise.

It gets too quiet around here sometimes.

I remember, when I was a child, I used to have nightmares about my powers going out of control and not being able to control them. My dad told Xavier about them, and Xavier talked to me about them and then they didn't come back again.

I was confident in using my powers, but not with talking to people.

In the garden, I stop right outside the little gates, listening for heavy breathing or soft giggles. I hear a voice, low, but nothing that sounds a desperate bid for privacy. Another moment and I've identified it as Kitty. It sounds like she's talking to herself.

Coming around the pumpkin patch and peering behind the greenhouse, I see Kitty and Destiny folded up, cross-legged, on the ground, with a bowl of peas in front of them, a half-full pile of beans beside it and getting bigger.

I don't know whether I should interrupt this, but they don't look argumentative or secretive. "Hey, Kitty."

"Franklin! I didn't see you there." She jumps, and then shakes her head, looks a little rueful. Whatever story Kitty was narrating is cut off-mid sentence as I interrupt, and Irene's face gives nothing away. Their faces are strained.

I sit in front of them, pull up some weeds that started growing in the pumpkin patch. "We'll need to start cooking those peas soon. Mikhail's hungry."

Kitty nods, though she still looks uncomfortable. "I'll finish up these, and then we'll start boiling them."

I glance down, and see a pad of paper-- Irene's communication. "Destiny--" At the surprised look on her face, I correct myself, and don't know why I suddenly feel so guilty to use that name. "Irene. I could, change things, so that you could speak. If you wanted me to. Because it must be hard, us not knowing sign language."

Her eyes widen, and beside her, Kitty's own features go from strained to a flicker of fear, then shock. Without waiting for Irene to respond, she asks me, "You could do that?"

"Sure." I scratch the back of my neck. Really, I should have thought of it sooner; it's not difficult to change a singular little thing like that. And communication with Irene would be more than useful-- someone who could see the future would be invaluable. "I really should have told you right away, Irene. It should be easy."

Irene runs a hand through her greying hair, smooths it out on top. She suddenly shows her age, and I duck my head, fight to stop from going red. I'm not that young; she's not that old. She finally pencils in, [It would probably be practical.]

"Okay. I can do it now, if you'd like."

Kitty says, "Now?"

"Sure, why not." I look at her, examine her face. Something in it is pleading with me to wait, or, stop. Something in me tells me that she hasn't even begun to explain what's going on here. I asked her if she was all right after the scene in our kitchen this morning. She wouldn't even talk about it-- and now, Irene and her are shelling peas, like they have a secret. "Would you rather I waited?"

Kitty blinks a few times, and opens her mouth, then closes it. Says, "No, it doesn't matter. If Irene's ready."

I focus on her vocal cords, try to alter them, but find that they're the right size, and fine. Then I try to find the synapses preventing her speech, following them through the frontal lobes and trying to repair damage that's non-existent.

There just isn't anything wrong.

"Irene," I start. "I don't really know what to do. You-- should be able to speak."

[tuesday -->]

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