Notes from the Burning Age

by Claire North

We were still in the hospital in Tseonom when they found Vae’s body, washed nearly seven kilometres downstream. They told the children she looked very peaceful, and when alone in the bathhouse I slipped beneath the water and held my breath until my throat spasmed and my face burned and my chest was a cavity swallowing me from the inside out, and then surfaced, and realised I would never believe anything an adult said ever again.

There were dark rings around her eyes. I had forgotten whether there was ever anything else around mine.

I think I will die out here and am grateful that I will be eaten, honoured that my flesh will give back to the earth that carried me. Children of sky and earth, thank you for feeding me; let me feed you in return. The water of my blood was the same stuff that the dinosaurs drank; I have been oceans, I have rained upon the desert, I have circled the earth a thousand times and will do so again, when the last part of me is gone. I do not fear death so much as a life lived failing; I hope that the hypothermia will take away the pain of my bruised bones before the end.

A single, cheeky robin sat a few inches from his tail, preening itself, enjoying the free ride, the power and majesty of the kakuy somewhat altered by its secondary role as birdstand.

The relentless bickering over the best way to transcend the need to bicker!

“It was never clear in the historical record,” I answered, “if the kakuy brought fire upon the people of the burning or if the world was already on fire, and the kakuy brought rain.”

There was no shrine in this place, no monument to the spirit of rust and the pit. The Medj had argued over whether to build one, to try to re-sanctify the blasted earth, but had eventually agreed that there were some things best left profane. Nothing grew from the yellow muck save brown, scraggy grass that lived only long enough to die.

I did not pray, since there are no gods with interests in human things.