Lamentations - Part One

Note: This version was workshopped extensively in a 451 class. Needless to say, it turned out quite different than I had originally intended, and I was so sick of it by the end that I cursed it and locked it away in a dark place. But, with some time and distance, I revisited it only to find that it wasn't so bad. I present to you "Lamentations."

Alistair was alone with Emil. Even the air howling by him bemoaned this reality. The sides of the copper canyon rose above on either side, trying, but failing despite their towering presence, to comfort him. The beige and crimson striped rock walls echoed the sounds of their footsteps, but not even that illusion was enough to distract Alistair from the truth: he was alone, and what’s worse, he was alone with Emil.

Alistair trudged on as he stared into the back of Emil’s head. His hair looked like a child had cut it; the locks varied in length and stuck at odd angles. Alistair hated it, and he hated that Emil knew he had done a terrible job.

“Why?” he asked Emil. “Why not just shave it?”

Emil turned and smiled a little wider— he was always smiling since it happened—and answered, “I wanted to see what I could accomplish on my own, my dear brother.”

Alistair ran a hand through his own shaggy hair and grumbled under his breath, “I’m not your brother.”

Emil’s boots skidded in the dirt as he spun around. His fists were clenched and his nostrils flared like an animal’s.

“What did you say?!” Emil’s face, square-jawed and blunt, was inches from Alistair’s angular features.

Alistair watched Emil’s irises tremor from left to right. He swallowed. “I said, I’m not your brother.”

Emil placed his palm on Alistair’s chest and gave him a small push. Alistair stumbled back a step.

“We’re brothers, we’re of one people!” Emil gestured like it was obvious.

Alistair protested, “Stop calling me your brother. We’re just cousins, and we aren’t anything alike!”

Emil’s anger didn’t subside. “You’re using their definition. Our family is the most sacred thing we have, and you’re classifying it by their standards? They’re all dead. We’re it, and we’re the First. The planet belongs to us again.”

“Right, right,” Alistair mocked him. “Elegua, the whole freakin’ planet, is ours, because we were here first. Listen, cousin, we may have been the first colonists, but we’re no longer the only ones.”

A croak of disbelief came from Emil. “Did you just forget all the video I showed you? We are the only ones, the entire People’s Colonial Republic is dead. The First is all that’s left.”

“Even with everyone in the PCR dead, we’re still just punks!”

Emil closed his eyes and breathed deeply, from the diaphragm. He tilted his head back and soaked in the sliver of sun that found its way to the canyon’s bottom. So pride in that stance, it was like he owned the place.

Alistair waited for his cousin to emerge from his break. When he did, he tapped Alistair’s oval chin playfully, and said, “It only matters that we are the last ones, and we are the First.”

“A whole civilization just got wiped out. I don’t know if anything matters anymore.” Alistair turned away from his cousin and walked on.

*

At first the peace and quiet had suited Alistair. He was able to tend to the flowers and ailing hibiscus without having to caution the pilgrims to be careful around the fragile plants. All of the vegetation at this oasis were descendants from seeds that had been brought from Earth. This was the same oasis that, after the first colonists had crash landed, had saved them from dying of thirst. It had become a sacred site, and it was up to Alistair to keep it in order.

He liked his job—it was an honor to be chosen, and the gardener was a coveted position—but he didn’t think he’d be alone for so long. Sure, he was a little homesick for his friends and family, but the clincher was that there hadn’t been any pilgrims in an entire week.

Alistair rubbed a hibiscus leaf between his fingers. “You’re slimy. I think it’s collar rot.” He lifted some clippers, his face apologetic. “I’m sorry, I must have watered you too much, and if I don’t clip your rotting stems, you might die.”

He snipped and snipped, the garden otherwise silent. “You, primrose! Be quiet. I need concentration.”

The peace and quiet had begun to wear on him. One week became two and he watched the grass grow. Then two became four, and Emil came.

*

Alistair and Emil leaned against the canyon wall for a water break. Alistair pretended that somebody had gone ahead of them and had painted the stratified colors in the rock to show them the way home, the way to his family.

Emil took a cautious drink from his canteen. Alistair stared off into space.

“Problem?” Emil asked.

“Why were you sent to come and get me? Why not Amanda, or somebody else?” Why did they send my crazy, volatile cousin?

“I volunteered. Amanda wanted to get you, but Uncle didn’t want her traveling by herself.”

Alistair wiped some sweat from his brow. A wave of nostalgia came over him. “Remember that time we snuck into the crash site?”

“And Amanda twisted her ankle climbing in after us? How can I forget? I got such a thrashing.”

Alistair grimaced at the memory, but it melted into a laugh. “I did, too. That was back when we still went adventuring.”

“You lost interest in the crash site,” Emil reminded him.

“And you never did?”

Emily screwed his canteen shut. “No, I never did.”

“Well, why didn’t you? It’s only ever been rubble. What was salvageable had already been taken.”

Emil watched the last of the sun’s rays disappear beyond the tall canyon wall. His face was now shaded. “I wanted to know more about the first colonists, more than what our parents and teachers have been telling us. They say our ancestors were peaceful, but sometimes I think…people out in the Outskirts, they don’t know the difference between peaceful and cowardly. I’d like to think that the people who travelled so far from everything they knew weren’t cowardly.”

“You can stop accusing us of being afraid of the PCR.” Alistair’s head reeled; the fact that they were gone was still sinking in. “We have only ourselves to fear now.”

They continued through the canyon in silence, the alternating pink and brown dust covering their boots and traveling up their pant legs. Some of it would get into Alistair’s mouth when the air blew just right. He imagined it tasted like death. Not death in the sense of rotting flesh, but death in the sense that life was absent. All life was absent, except for Emil, who was as enigmatic as a weed that had uprooted and took a walk through the desert not in search of water, but just because he wanted to. As the gardener Alistair had been used to pulling weeds, but now it seemed it was a weed who was pulling him into a world without the PCR.

PART TWO