Just Simple Little Cruelties : The Last Emperors of the Sea (4)

You look out the window above the sink, thinking of old times. A distant part of your mind notices the small, dark shapes moving in the perpetual green light outside and recognizes them as people who have ventured beyond the city’s wall, but you don’t pay attention to these wanderers. The thoughts that fill your head instead are all aged. This has been happening to you often lately, the past sneaks up at you out of nowhere while you’re doing the most mundane of things.
The past, it’s more of a story than anything to you now. You were young once, you know this though you can’t remember. You are sure you had dreams then; plans that if told to you now you might not even recognize. The only thing you grow sure of about that life, that fading self, is that it holds no resemblance with your current one.
The baby cries in the next room. The sharp sound pushes your thoughts to the back of your mind, there to wait until your next unguarded moment. Leaving the darker kitchen, you follow the noise in silence to the always lit part of your home.
The first thing Hela had wanted to do when the boy was born was get one of those bots that help new parents raise their children, but you had refused. Burdened with all the mad optimism of a novice, you had wanted to do it all yourself. Now, a year later, the feeling that you might have made the wrong choice has become a sort of habit, invading your mind in patches over the months. And knowing this mood will pass only helps you so much.
Once in your arms, it just takes a little while for the child to calm down. He is beautiful. From the moment you laid eyes on him you have known this. And you know it more every day when you catch a glimpse of his ridiculously large brown eyes framed by locks of his black hair, a color so rich that it reminds you of the true darkness beyond the glowing algae that surround the city.
Your friends always tell you he looks just like you, but you don’t see it yourself. What you see in him, and his ever growing array of expressions, is Hela. You used to love him because of that resemblance, once, not too long ago. Now you love him despite it.
The boy looks up at you, smiling and frowning while you talk nonsense to him. The change in his features totally unconnected with the things you say, he watches you from your cradling arms as you take a seat. Within a few breaths, the child is back to sleep and your lips cease their motion as you fall back to silence.
It’s as you make your son comfortable in his bed that you hear the front door opening. You leave the boy’s room to greet the person you have been waiting for. You go to the one you have sworn to love for the rest of your life. And, as you do this, you also shy away from the knowledge that, somehow, time had eroded that feeling you once had until you aren’t sure if it’s still there anymore.
You wait patiently, watching as bags are thrown on the table by the door. You stand quietly as shoes are cast aside from the feet they had held safe. At first, no trepidation troubles your heart. You have rehearsed the speech a hundred times. But then, between one moment and the next, you feel a ridiculous nervousness when the person you have lived with for the past nine years finally finishes and steps deeper into your home. Yet you don’t let that stop you; instead, you put on a painfully obvious fake smile and open your mouth to speak.
She doesn’t even look up as she passes you by on her way to the bathroom.
By the time Hela returns to the living room, you’ve gotten a hold of yourself while preparing dinner. You take a seat at the table and watch as she does the same. Out of common courtesy, she uses the table to watch her feed instead of having it overlaid on the world around her. The gesture means nothing to you as she never looks up from whatever she’s watching.
“Hela,” you begin, all nervousness ignored for a time, “I have been following the reports on the new plan for the expansion of the city.”
“Hmm…?” she responds, still not looking up.
“I know you know this,” you continue, your meal neglected as you look at her, “but, they are saying the habitats of the Emperors will be destroyed if it is followed through.”
An intake of breath, the very sound of distraction, is what Hela responds with.
You watch her silently for a moment, annoyance building inside you. It wasn’t always like this. You are sure, or, you think so at least. “You have to do something!” you say, all prepared speech forgotten as you raise your voice with passion.
She looks up at last, surprise mastering her face. “Me?” she says, as if the thought is one of pure madness.
“You are Elect,” you say, looking down at your food. “You rule the council.”
“I guide the council.”
A snort of a mirthless laugh escapes your pressed lips. The reply is so clearly made to deflect your attention that it suddenly reminds you of the first time she did a thing like it. You had hated it then, too. ‘Maybe it’s time to stop living a life filled only with the version of events you want to believe,’ the thought filters through your mind to touch your conscious like a sting.
“You have to save them, Hela,” you say, looking up to meet the eyes of the person sitting before you.
“They’ve killed someone,” she says, turning back to her feed as a frown starts to mar her smooth brow. “If it had only been an attack like the old ones, I might have been able to do something. Now, it’s suicide to even think of saving them. The people want them gone. What possible reason could I give them?”
You know the incident she’s talking about. It had been all over the news a couple of weeks ago. It had happened when a group of people had wandered away from the city during the celebrations of the Day of Water, the annual event commemorating the time when the founders of the city had fled the rising radiation levels falling on the lands of the planet to make their home in the safety of the ocean deeps.
Though most people had swiftly villainized the giant fish, she had seen the various feeds. The victims had wandered into the restricted space of the creatures. They had also been wearing the flowing robes, common in the celebration, which rippled with bright color in the dark water: a thing even a child knew not to do when near the animals.
“Ca…,” you begin, but the sound of crying coming from your son’s room distracts you and you get up to go to him.
Soothing the boy back to sleep, you think of the reason that made you speak to her. Though you tell yourself that you only care about the animals, deep down you know it’s not just that which made you raise the issue. It had all began a few weeks ago when the new expansion plans for the city were proposed. You hadn’t noticed it at first, but, little by little, you have caught the looks, the sharp changes of topics. It still took some days for you to realize that your friends were acting differently around you. It took less time for you to find the reason was Hela. They were blaming her for the destruction of the animals’ home, and, by association, they were blaming you, too.
“They are the last wild thing in the sea,” you say, back from the child’s room to take your place at the table.
“What?” Hela asks in a distracted voice, eating the last bites of her meal.
“They are the only truly wild things left on the planet,” you repeat, your gaze never leaving the person before you. “Do you want your son to grow up in that kind of world? He would never meet their eyes and see the spark of intelligence there. He wouldn’t be able to see them up close, knowing that they could crush him if they so wished. If you don’t do something now, that boy will never know a creature not tainted by its contact with humans.”
“So,” she responds. You know she isn’t trying to anger you by the distracted look on her face.
“It’s the right thing to do.”
She actually laughs out loud at the idea. When she looks up and sees the look on your face, she tries to hide her incredulity. “Love,” she begins, looking as if she was talking to a child, “nobody cares about right. The people decide everything and they don’t want to know the truth. What they want to do is believe it when someone tells them that nothing is too bad.”
“But you could change that,” you say, the words leaving your mouth without much work from your mind. “Wasn’t that why you decided to run for the seat? You once said you wanted to give the people what they needed instead of what they wanted. Have you forgotten already?”
The look on her face tells you that she had forgotten. It also tells you that she hates herself for only realizing it now. “Well,” she begins, trying to sound uncaring while also working to hide her hurt, “we all must adapt to reality.”
“No…,” you start, but she doesn’t let you finish.
“Just let it go, will you!”
It’s an annoyed outburst more than an angry one. After she says it, Hela leaves the table and walks out of the room. Her retreat is slow enough not to look like one, but you both know the truth. You feel the unmindful contempt with which her words are flung at you. Alone in the room, you understand that she doesn’t care about a thing you say; that she’s just indulging you.
‘There must have been a time when she cared, right?’ you ask yourself, and the answer shows itself as a lacking thing in your memory.
You don’t leave your seat until you have finished your meal. You don’t taste the food, but the mindless act of eating it soothes your roiling emotions somewhat. ‘I wonder if she’s having an affair,’ the thought comes out of nowhere, but it’s oddly less shocking than you could have ever imagined.
The idea that the woman whom you have had a child with may be sleeping with another person doesn’t startle you. It seems more of an inevitable thing to you. If you weren’t so self-conscious and lazy, you know you would do it yourself. Your relationship had turned a different path even before your son was born. Yet, you hadn’t realized it until that very date.
Rushing to the hospital as soon as you heard the news, you had called Hela then. Her assistant had answered to tell you that she was in a meeting. The old man had also told you that she had already received the news. Later, you had browsed the public recordings of the council, whose members’ office lives were almost entirely documented as per the law, trying to find the moment she had been told she was a mother. If it wasn’t for the time, you wouldn’t have noticed there was anything remarkable for all the reaction she had shown then.
When you finish eating, you pick up the dirty dishes and head for the kitchen. Once there, you seem to not be able to do the simple act of loading the washer with the things you hold. After a while, you place your load in the sink, promising yourself you’ll get to them in the morning. But even as you do this, you think, ‘Why are we always selfish to our future selves?’
You look out the window above the sink, seeing the green light outside the city’s wall yet feeling the dark waters beyond it. You love this view. You feel it’s one of the few good things that came with Hela’s work.
You sigh aloud, making a wordless confession to the unseen darkness out there. You think of your life. You wonder what you are going to do about everything, about anything. And, suddenly, you remember your love’s words. You feel their truth as you taste them on your tongue when you shape them in a whisper, “We adapt.”
The thought draws a sad smile from your lips. But you know it is true. Whether as individuals or groups, you now understand, in a remembering kind of way, people accept almost anything if it happens gradually. Yet, this insight doesn’t clear things up for you however much you wish it to do so. Knowledge, you realize, doesn’t always result in change, even when it most needs to.
You sigh aloud again; this time, though, the soft sound seems so lonely to you.