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Mila wakes to thunder.
At first she isn’t sure, even after wrestling herself out from under the dusty, suffocating sheet some well-meaning soul had lain over her body. The shroud lifts from her eyes, but the darkness around her remains.
She doesn’t think she’s ever been in so much darkness— such a complete and all consuming void, oppressive and absolute. She cannot see her hand in front of her face; she cannot see even the movement of it. Mila has never believed in an existence after death, but for a moment, she doubts.
Then, the pain comes.
It blooms in her chest, her legs, the back of her head. She remembers answering the door, and the answering pressure in her chest. She remembers falling, and the impact of her skull. She runs her hands through her tacky hair, which has come loose to brush the ridges of her face in clumping tresses. She tastes her own blood in the stale air. She tastes it on her fingers. Mostly, she tastes dust: the dust of Cardassia, of Enabran’s home (her home, now, all hers to drift through alone). The air is drying, and she is thirsty. She closes her mouth.
She can almost hear the echo of her boy, shouting her name in panic. She can almost remember him speaking over her, waxing nostalgia and making foolish promises of vengeance. Dramatic as ever.
“Elim?” She calls into the dark. She hears her own hoarse voice, and her labored breathing. Under that, she can feel the weak rhythm of her heart. She receives no answer—not even an echo.
It’s good, that he isn’t here. If she taught him anything well, it was how to survive. That was her skill, in the end. It is why she remains, even now.
Mila tries to stand, and is overcome, world tipping without reference. She doesn’t know which way is up, and she aches (oh, how she aches!), and she finds herself back in all fours, her head bowed to the ground.
She presses the centers of her being to the cold stone (in subservience, not in prayer, and the distinction is important even now). She feels Cardassia shake underneath her in answer. She kneels there, bowed, for an eternity.
Eventually, the thunder stops. She thought she had been imagining it; that it had been some hallucination brought on by injury. It is worse, that it isn’t. There are no thunder storms in Cardassia City.
Time passes strangely. It crawls, and so does she, unable to balance as she is. Forward, until she feels the stone steps, leading up and out. She ascends, until she no longer can. Where a door once existed, there is only more stone. She presses herself against it, and it shifts alarmingly. She snatches her hand back, and nearly falls down the stairs in her haste to retreat when the stone (the rubble, the house) collapses inward.
She is trapped, here in her own home. What had been her home, for years, until Enabran retired, and the staff was dismissed. Only then was she permitted to call the upstairs her own, too. (Of course, it always had been).
She is hungry. This, at least, is something she can address. She knows what secrets lie here, and what provisions, too. Yamok and delsha roots, sem’hal and regova preserved in brine, and crates and crates of sweet kanar.
She crawls until she feels the wall. Stone and cold, she rests her cheek against it. It becomes her guide. She maps the space, orients herself. Finds crate after crate, and opens them. Here, the place settings. Here, the spare blankets. Here, Tolan’s belongings— what little he had, that he had not bestowed upon his nephew. She presses fabric— a shirt?— to her face, and buries herself in it. But of course, his scent is long gone.
She misses him. She’s grieved her brother in her own way— privately, in public. Nothing as untoward or seditious as a Hebetian rite. But quietly, in her long strolls through the gardens of Tarlak, she would speak to him in whispers—a silly gesture, but one she concedes he would appreciate. Often, she would update him on what little she knew of Elim’s life.
He so rarely came home, even before the exile. It was expected; he had never truly needed her. Even as a child, he had been fiercely independent, if too smart for his own good. Always getting into trouble, but never anything he couldn’t handle.
Tolan insisted otherwise. She knew his worries; she also knew that they would not serve Elim well, if he wished to survive to adulthood. And he did. Thanks to her, he did.
(She never thinks of his birth—the white haired doctor who delivered the sightless babe from her body, and took him away before she could ask to hold him. Returning him, hours later, hungry and confused. And when she pressed the child against her breast at last, she sensed nothing from him at all, but the piercing sound of his wails.)
When she finally finds the kanar, she drinks heavily, until she can no longer think, and then she drinks some more. She eats pickled regova, and raw delsha, which is disgusting but will not kill her. She waits in the darkness, and marks the passage of time by empty bottles and jars. She uses one corner of the cellar for her own waste, and curses the stone foundation. The smell becomes awful, but at least she can always find that corner. She learns to tolerate it.
There was a folktale her mother would tell often, when she was a girl. Mila has heard it sung so often that she can recite it from memory, and she does so now, whenever the darkness threatens to overwhelm her. On these occasions, she can almost hear her mother’s commanding voice, overlaying her own slurred words.
It was a tale of three sisters:
The oldest was Letau. Responsible and bright, she drew attention and adoration from everyone who met her, especially the village children, who were entranced by her gentle radiance. The second sister was Ishnet, who was just as beautiful, but a rarer sight. A sharp and industrious woman, she spent four seasons of every year on the wide sea, but every time she returned for the fifth season, the season of the tides, she brought her bounty with her, and the entire village ate well.
And then there was Pem. Little Pem, who was blind and infirm, who relied on her sisters and could offer no support in return. Who offered the village nothing but her presence, and that was enough.
One day, Pem was left all alone. Ishnet was fishing, and Letau, too, had been called away, tempted by a suitor in the city. While they were gone, no work was done in their fields, no visitors were entertained. Occasionally, someone from the village would knock on the door, but they never received an answer. The lights were off, but they knew Pem had not left, as she did not have the means. They were not put off by the lack of answer; Pem was an odd girl who rarely spoke, and preferred the peace of her own company. Still, they never stopped checking on her, because she was theirs, as surely as Ishnet and Letau were.
One day, a man came by the house, hoping to make his suit to Letau, whose beauty was well known across the continent. He had been rejected several times before, but he was undeterred. He knocked on the door and received no answer. He left, and returned the next day. Still there was no answer. On the third day, he grew impatient, and entered the home without invitation.
He found Pem sitting alone, listening to the song of the winds outside. He asked her, angrily, where her sister had gone, and received no answer for his trouble. She did not even look at him. He asked again, and again, she said nothing, and turned her back to him. Furious, the stranger hurled vitriol at Pem, who only listened. He accused her of being a burden, an ugly girl with no future, whose sisters resented her, who would never amount to anything.
Pem did not give him the satisfaction of an answer. She knew her sisters loved her, and that the people in the town valued her presence, even if she could give nothing tangible back to them. She knew she was a true Cardassian, no matter what she could offer, no matter how much care she required.
Angered by her silence, the man made to attack her. Before he could strike the first blow, he was stopped. A child from the village had seen him enter the house, and suspecting ill intent, alerted others in town of his presence. He was tried for his crime, and exiled to the northern desert, as was the custom of the time.
The child who had sent for help later asked Pem why she did not insist her sisters stay with her, or request a caretaker from the village. Pem had simply replied:
“I thank the village for its protection, and my sisters for their care. But I enjoy my solitude. The others shine so much brighter, when they do return.”
The child thought this a rather odd philosophy, but repeated it to Letau when she returned. She worried for her little sister, but knew that she was peculiar, and respected her need for privacy. And she knew that the village would always protect her from harm.
So three nights of every season, she ventured away from home to visit her suitor, and give her sister the isolation she craved. And every time she or Ishnet returned, they were greeted by her brightest smiles.
And that was it. Mila had never thought it a particularly interesting story. The sisters were, of course, the moons of Cardassia, but they were the subjects of many fables, including ones more interesting and patriotic than this one. But it had been a favorite of Tolan’s, and so he told it to Elim, on the darkest nights of the year—the twelve nights of the Blind Moon.
She does not know why she finds herself clinging to it so. Perhaps it is a comfort, now that she has been left alone in this dark tomb that was her home. But unlike Pem, her family will not be returning for her, and the village will not come to her aid.
She has been alone for a long time, however. She is used to the quiet of solitude, the absence of her family. It is this loneliness she thinks of, when she is deep in her cups.
The isolation of the cellar is different, and it plagues her. Even after Enabran left, those years ago, and she returned here, she still interacted with her neighbors, she still went to the shops and attended public gatherings. She was among her people, and she felt her own belonging (oh, she knew the looks she would get, fear and disdain in equal measure. She had no friends, anymore— all dead, or abandoned, by her own judgment as much as Enabran’s).
She tries not to drink herself to stupor too often. It only results in more pain, and the kanar is her only source of hydration, sickening as it is. Oh, how she longs for a drop of water. But even if she could dig through the stone, the well on this land dried years ago.
Occasionally she hears a sound from above. She stops screaming for help after the first dozen times she hears the shifting of stones. Nobody can hear her. Nobody cares.
Instead she talks to hear the sound of her own voice, tells more half remembered stories from childhood, and when those run out, she tells the stories of her own life. Sometimes, she wishes she would run out of air. She can’t bear the thought of starving to death.
More time passes. She thinks on her life, all the secrets she’s kept. She had hoped to pass them to Elim, at least. The boy had told her he had taken Enabran’s Shri’tal, but Enabran had few secrets she did not know, she she has plenty of her own. There is so much she wishes to say to him, that she could never say before. That she will never be able to say, outside her death bed. But she will be dying here with nobody to hear her words.
She has never considered herself much of a mother, but then, Elim was never allowed to be much of a son. She wonders what it would be like, had their lives been different, had she been worth the risk of marrying, had Enabran not been the man that he was. But there is no use in dwelling on such things.
She opens more crates in the cellar, looking for anything that will help her. She finds nothing useful. Nothing she can identify in the dark. Still, it is something to do.
This is how she finds an old toy of Elim’s. It had once been hers— a threadbare doll given to her by her favorite aunt. She can recognize it by the details of its dress, sewn painstakingly by her own hand. She weeps over it bitterly.
She drinks. She eats. She waits. She sleeps. The cycle repeats, over and over. She regains her balance, and loses it again. Over, and over.
She misses Enabran. He had always taken care of her, and she him. She had loved him fiercely once— had thought it returned, once. Such childish dreams were abandoned, when she found herself with child, one she fought so hard to keep, despite the danger of it. And in turn, Enabran had kept her. Kept them both, in his way. She would always be grateful.
He had needed her, of course, just as much as she needed him. Such a ridiculous man he was, too sure of his own power, too wary of it being taken away. He would have died several times over had it not been for her intervention. And of course, when he left her behind (the fool, going into the field at his age, allying with the Tal’Shiar of all things), he barely lasted a month before falling to his own hubris.
Elim was not like that. He always took after her in that respect, and she is grateful, because it means that somewhere above her, he is alive. He must be.
Over time, her thoughts grow less coherent. She spends much of her time lying still, reveling in her inebriation. There is nothing more to do. Once, overcome, she tries again to escape through the blocked door, but only gains bloody claws and a banged hip for her efforts.
She grows bored, and weeps and rages in equal measure. Once, drunk as she always is, now, she stumbles into one of the shelves of preserves. Jars come crashing around her, and the scent of grain-vinegar fills the stale air. She laughs, because that is her life, on the floor. She falls to her knees, feels the ground around her. She deplores waste. Her hand lands on what she thinks is a pickled regova by its texture, and she eats it heedlessly.
Glass crunches in her mouth, and she bleeds from it. She does not care. She falls asleep surrounded by her mistake, and the shards pierce through her scales.
When she wakes, she curses her folly. She sweeps up the mess as best she can. She does not eat any more glass.
The kanar burns going down. She sleeps. She wakes. She eats a yamok tuber that has gone off, and retches it back up. She eats another one, a good one, but it does not settle her stomach. She stops talking to herself. It hurts too much.
She does not know how much time she has spent in the dark when she hears it: the shifting of the rubble above her. Louder than it’s ever been. She hears machinery, she thinks. She might be imagining it, but it is a nice change of pace, regardless.
She stumbles to where she knows the stairs to be. And she waits patiently for the light to shine down on her.
To her shock, it does— a small ray at first, it would be almost negligible had there been any other source available, had she not grown so used to her prison. It’s enough to see the destruction around her. Enough to see the cuts on her hands, the way her dress hangs off her frame.
She hears voices, and longs to call out, but nothing emerges from her throat. She waits. She is good at waiting.
Rocks tumble around her, and the doorway is, miraculously, clear.
The light of the sun floods in, all at once, and it is bright and it is blinding. She closes her burning eyes.
There is deafening silence, which is broken by a shocked, familiar voice.
“Mila?”
She can say nothing. Nothing needs to be said. She stretches out her arms, and finds herself held in the tight, desperate embrace of her son, who has finally come home.