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Everyone is exhausted and covered in grime from the debris, but it’s been one of the better days for progress, and they’re all in good spirits when they break for a late lunch.
Aina passes around an upturned cap full of small slips of paper. “Secret Santa,” she explains when Meis gives her a baffled look. “We do one every year. I figured it’d be nice if you guys were a part of it this time, too.” She nods over to where the Boss has one of the slips in his hand, a thoughtful look on his face.
“Sure, okay,” Gueira answers, and Aina smiles in relief, clearly having worried that they’d reject the idea.
All of them, Burning Rescue and former Burnish alike, are making an effort to live in the now. The deep anger on both sides can wait until after the rebuilding is done. Maybe these tentative new bonds will survive that fury, maybe not, but either way it’s something they need to leave to the future. There’s work to be done.
After everyone’s done eating and is heading back to work, Meis gestures with his cigarettes and lighter. “Join me?”
Gueira doesn’t smoke — he was a sickly kid, and who knows how post-Burnish immune systems work. Last thing he needs it to get any weaker than he already is, especially when there’s so much work to be done rebuilding. “Yeah, sure.”
They find a spot in the shade outside the Burning Rescue HQ and Meis lights up. “You don’t mind that? Getting dragged into Christmas stuff?” he asks.
Gueira shrugs. “Nah. It’s fine. I don’t care that much.” He shows Meis the slip he got, marked with LUCIA in scrawly handwriting. “She’ll be easy to buy for. I know a guy who sells good solder for cheap. I’ll just put a ribbon on a spool of that.”
“Santa might not be the most Christian bit of Christmas,” Meis replies. “But I know I’ve heard you mention Yom Kippur. You don’t have to do it if it’s weird.”
“Nah, my family were, like… culturally Jewish,” answers Gueira. “It was their community, their values, but not their faith, you know? I was raised atheist when it came to actual shit like that.”
“Yeah, same here,” Meis agrees, taking another drag on his cigarette.
Neither of them say the obviously extrapolation of Gueira’s seemingly random comment: that adjusting to being human again is going easier for the two of them than for a lot of the others, because the two of them had been culturally Burnish. It was their community and values, and they’d both come very close to killing and dying for it on more occasions than they cared to think about. But it had never been a faith, not like it had been for the Boss, like it had been for so many others.
For Meis and Gueira, there didn’t need to be anything deep or mystical about it, no flames crying out for their will to be carried out.
Some things had to burn to live. That was just their nature.
Maybe their time in Australia had given them that perspective. They’d managed to get in on tourist visas, back before Burnish screenings were standard at every airport. It had seemed like a safer place than the States. The protests were less violent. They’d wound up deported eventually, caught out and shipped back, treated like garbage in a detention centre for months before relocation. But that had come later.
When they’d lived in Australia, being Burnish hadn’t seemed like such a freakish aberration. Some things needed the fire to live. It was simply how things were: the eucalyptus trees with their flammable oil, inviting fires to come and wipe out encroaching species that would take their resources, surviving safely themselves.
And byblis — called rainbow plants, iridescent in the unrelenting Australian sunshine — needed fire in order for their seeds to open. Without burning they couldn’t bloom. Purple, pale violet, white, a scatter of blossoms in the parched landscape.
Fire was deadly and terrifying in Australia, but it would have been absurd to hate the eucalyptus or the byblis for needing it. That was simply their nature. It would have been like hating someone for being queer.
…a guy who’d worn eye makeup in Texas and a scrawny weakling from a Florida football town knew more than enough about that kind of irrational bullshit.
Would they have found each other, if they hadn’t both been Burnish? Maybe. Maybe not. Impossible to know, irrelevant to think about. There’s no other reality except this one, where they did.
“Okay, we’d better get back to it,” Meis sighs, stubbing out his cigarette and fitting the respirator mask back over the lower half of his face. The irony of going from one action to the other isn’t lost on him, but it’s all a matter of degrees — smoking might not be great for him, but it’s not the same as inhaling the particle levels present in the rubble they’re clearing. He likes having one cigarette, but that doesn’t mean he wants the equivalent of forty.
Considering how widespread the destruction of the city is, almost nobody they’ve encountered has been mourning or furious over what was lost. That makes Meis and Gueira think of Australia, too; of the cultural burning that Indigenous groups have been doing for tens of thousands of years to cultivate the land.
It was a necessary thing, the cultural burning, even if it seemed frightening and violent when it was underway. It changed the landscape into something better, something more diverse. Though it seemed a destruction, it was really a rebirth.
The hours pass. The cold makes their hands sting as evening becomes night and the end of their shift approaches. Winters aren’t what they were three decades ago, but that time is barely more than a hazy childhood blur for either of them, and they’ve lived their whole lives in the warm.
Even nights in the east coast desert hadn’t felt cold when they’d been Burnish.
They finish their shift, rinse off all the nasty crud that’s sticking to their skin and clothes, and head for home — as much a home as they have at the moment, anyway. The temporary, ramshackle accomodations that’ve been set up to house the formerly-captive Burnish remind Meis and Gueira a little too much of the detention centre they’d been stuck in, way back when, but it’s better than nothing. Being able to go back to the same bed every night in the same place is an unfamiliar luxury.
Agni is waiting by the gate when they arrive back at the compound, scuffing his feet in the dirt.
“What’s up, buddy? You keep the place safe while we were gone?” Meis asks.
Agni nods, expression serious. “A girl is here to talk to you two.” He bites his lip. He’s still growing in his adult teeth. “Are you gonna start kissing girls now?”
They exchange a look. “Uh, no?” Gueira manages. “Why would you think that?”
“Because Blaise said all of us are normal now.”
“I’m gonna turn Blaise over to Ignis for some intensive sensitivity training,” Meis mutters drily. Then, in gentler tones, he tells Agni, “We’re not going to start kissing girls. She’s probably just here from Burning Rescue to check our schedule for tomorrow.”
The kid looks deeply relieved. “Good. If you had to kiss girls that would mean I would have to kiss girls, and girls are so gross .”
He runs off, leaving the two of them to exchange a look and start laughing heartily.
The girl waiting in their area of the barracks isn’t any of the ones they know from Burning Rescue. She has a cloud of pretty brown hair tied off her face with a red scarf and a sad, nervous expression.
“Oh, hi,” she says, offering out a hand out. “My, um, my name’s Naiya. I’ve been asking around and… and it seems like you two knew my sister. That you tried to save her.”
There were a lot of sisters. A lot of people they tried to save. It’s hard to say for certain if they’ll be able to remember the specific person Naiya’s talking about. Still, Meis nods.
“I’m sorry that we couldn’t do enough,” he offers.
She presses her lips together. “I wish…” she starts, but there’s no way to end that sentence. They know that as well as anyone.
They all stand together, quiet for a moment. Then Naiya holds out a wrapped package, decorated with a big bright blue bow. “Here. It’s not much, but I wanted to thank you. For caring about her.”
They pull the ribbon free, revealing a large box of expensive-looking crystallised fruit, gleaming ginger and cherries and orange slices like jewels laid out before them. Gueira whoops in delight.
“Kids! Get over here! Candy!”
The younger inhabitants of the compound begin to gather instantly, clamouring for their share of the spoils.
With a small smile of goodbye, Naiya turns to go, but Meis catches her by the sleeve of her shirt.
He wants to tell her that there are some things that can only grow when the ground has worn a layer of ash, but knows that this wouldn’t be any comfort to her yet. Maybe someday, a long time from now.
“Stay,” he says instead. “The kids like showing people around. There’s an area outside where they’re allowed to spray-paint. They call it their gallery.”
Her smile widens, even as her eyes stay so sad. “Okay. I’d like that.”