THE OMEN GIRL | Wattys 2020 Winner

𝟏𝟕

The city of Tall Titan is surrounded by hills and mountains like rolling waves, waves of dense jungle. And tucked between a hill and a valley, hidden by its curves and dips, is a hospital compound. Gaia alights us in its courtyard.

The rain is all thunderous applause. My vision washes out with it, curtains grey. Out of that grey comes people – men and women in hospital gear – that rush to my side and Naqi's, Naqi who is still on my back.

They carry us in. All is a blur.

#

This is the hospital Naqi mentioned that time in the nest, the one that Yashi went to for the removal of her omen stained tongue.

It's a humble complex, only three floors high with two small wings, a courtyard, a wind-tossed garden. No roads connect through the mountains to the complex. Instead, behind the building, a line of tracks run straight and sleek. Freight trains rumble over it every once in a while, and the mountains rumble along.

Inside, the fluorescent lights catch in the polish of the halls, looking like wet smudges, and the silence of the halls are sterile.

When the doctors look me over, when they examine my body, they tell me that my stain is gone. I do not understand.

I look at my bared back in the mirror. I see the curve of my shoulder blade. It is pale, and without blemish, smooth in the absence of scabs. The doctors are telling the truth. My stain is gone. I am no longer an Omen.

I feel—nothing.

All my life, all my life, I've wanted this, dreamt this.

But the reality of it thuds hollow, falls empty.

The truth of it rings through me and then peters out, away, gone. Nothing is left.

I stand outside an infirmary room after. I look in through the window.

Naqi is on the bed inside.

His eyes are wrapped. His hands are taped down with drips. Flakes of dried medicine-oil still cakes the inside of his ears, where the nurses and doctors didn't reach far enough to clean. His chest rises up and down with breath, shallow breath.

I don't move any closer. I don't deserve to.

A doctor asks me questions I do not know how to answer, because I was a monster then, and knew only monstrous things. But while I was a monster, I felt Naqi. I felt him touch my cheek. I felt his pain. I know, now, that Naqi had traded places with me.

He took Gaia my star and transferred his human senses to me, and then took on for himself the senses of a monster's. He took on my omen.

The doctor says it's dampened his sense of touch, though it seems to be returning slowly, surely, as most of his stains recede slowly, surely away – it's a blessing no one understands, though I think I do. The original state of my stain was six or so inches long, two or so inches wide. If Naqi truly took my stain, it would make sense that his would be the same size.

And while the omen had caused extensive damage to his eardrums, those stains are also receding. With the doctors' help, his ears should heal with time.

But his eyes. But his eyes.

I don't know why the omen didn't settle over Naqi's back like mine. I don't know why it's chosen to seat over his eyes, instead. They're painted like brush strokes over his nose and lids, black beneath his bandages.

I see Naqi smiling at me, puffed with pride, saying things like, takes skill to walk around perfectly without my eyes, and I crumple my hands against my own eyes, because I don't deserve to see.