Dynasty

ix. LANGUAGE OF BIRDS

ix.
LANGUAGE OF BIRDS

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"When you saw the dead little bird, you started crying / But you know the killer doesn't understand"
— Phoebe Bridgers, Moon Song

Judgement found Fallon back in the throne room, burning and blazing a thousand degrees, piercing the dome-shaped chrysalis of Sundari and the slope of the palace's glass ceiling, cutting golden shapes into Fallon's shoulders with incendiary precision. The smell of smoke lingered in her hair, upon her shoulders, ashy and carcinogenic and undercut by the scent of burned flesh. It choked Fallon like fog, like death.

It was accurate enough.

Fallon often felt like a corpse—like a husk, paradoxically filled with some sort of emptiness, as if there were something she was missing in herself, something that was the exact shape of a body (her body) with seams parallel to hers, with scars the same shade of silver as her own.

Or, she felt like she was trapped in a body just-slaughtered and still-warm, as if the last morsels of life were lingering on her fingertips, grasping for something they couldn't hold, begging for more heat, begging for more time. It was as if another face was pressing at the inside of her skull, aching to be let out, aching to escape, to split open her skin and replace it with theirs and claim her bones as their own. It was a violent feeling, and yet, it wasn't: she could feel herself, both victim and crime scene, and she could feel the viscera wet and hot on her skin. But still, like watching footage of an old war, long since lost, projected in black and white, she couldn't see the colour of the carnage—the red, the blood. She was distanced from it all, detached; and so, she did not stir.

But the sunlight was a different kind of interment, a different kind of purgatory—one she couldn't understand, even if she tried to. Fallon felt it bore into her back, her shoulders, blooming a bright blush beneath her skin—red and soft, it would later peel like an overripe fruit. She could also feel Satine's silent assessment from her throne, as the Duchess' pale eyes settled on the ash plastered to her niece's face, on the concrete rubble that dusted her shoulders. Fallon kept her gaze fixed on the ground before her, choosing a slow cremation over facing her aunt. At least this was warm.

Had Fallon done anything wrong? Objectively, no. Did she feel as if she had? Yes, yes, yes. She couldn't say it to herself enough. It had been mere minutes since the charred skeleton of the library had been stormed by Sundari guards, since Fallon and Hiro had been pulled from the building, coughing and spluttering, soot-covered and black-lunged. Since the two padawans had been tugged back across the courtyard, back through the crowd that had gathered like a forest—the sun began its trial then, coming swiftly as if through trees. The Mandalorians stood, watching, unmoving, the glow of the inferno bright in their hair, the horror on their faces catching the light.

Jedi, Fallon had seen the syllables gathering on their lips as she and Hiro passed, the word thick and black like tar. Her lightsabre gleamed in the afternoon sun, no longer hidden by Satine's cloak. It had never felt heavier on her hip.

          "I regret that your afternoon on Sundari was cut short," Satine said evenly, lancing the silence like an ulcer and shaking Fallon from her thoughts. "But I am glad that you both were here to react so swiftly and nobly to the incident—" At that word, incident, so cavalier, Fallon felt Hiro tense beside her, "—as I'm sure that, without your aid, we would have suffered worse casualties than a mere building. Such structures can be rebuilt—starting anew is not unknown to us on Sundari—but lives are not so salvageable. Thank you."

Fallon blinked. The crowd had parted for her like a criminal on their way to the gallows, judgment passed with no trial or trepidation—and as she had walked, the soles of her shoes tread upon pieces of broken glass, fragments of the stained-glass window she had admired just before the explosion. Fallon wanted to stop and examine the glass, to decipher what section of the mural it had been, to mourn the loss of such beauty. She had to settle for a passing glance.