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⁰⁵ TRAUMATA
❝ We're all weeping now, weeping because there ain't nothing we can do to protect you. ❞
―Nick Cave, O Children
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SOPHIA SAT ON A PLASTIC CRATE. Bony shoulders slumped, feet bent, reeling in the twisted sadness of worrying for a father that never did for her. Fiddling her fingers in their timid nature, anyone could tell this had been a habit from before. Sophia left herself isolated until Harlene held her hands and brought her to the circle of the kids of the camp, busying them with games to take their minds off the truth.
The truth was that Jim's dream had sounded like a nightmare to her. His silhouette had been noticed mining the soil and disturbing the folk. Shane had used brute force to drag the man back to the camp from the hills, tying him to a tree, telling Harlene he had a buzzed brain from his hard labor under the heat rays. He had been digging holes indeed — graves, tens of them. But when Dale had asked him why, all Jim had been able to offer was a ramble about a long-forgotten reverie.
The man could not scare her as he had the others. Jim had a sharp tongue she liked bickering with and regardful hands that had taught her all about repair and maintenance. Harlene could not find it in herself to see him, anyhow. Static ripples rocked her whenever he crossed her mind and her gut repelled his strange sunstroke behavior.
It was her intuitions, perhaps.
But the night fell homely. Morales built a cage around the fire with the stones he had collected, letting them light bigger flames, boasting about it for hours. The days were getting colder, so they stayed close to the heat. Andrea cleaned the fish she and Amy had hunted, and Jacqui helped grill them. Harlene spent the night with the rifle snug in her clutch, alerted by her senses. She had been forced to sit and eat by Dale.
As if nothing was wrong with the world. Gathered around the fire and drinking with a sweet conversation between friends and families - people to lean on in hard times. To prevail together was to grow around each other like coiling vines.
