Conjoin

Untitled part

The two of them stand over the hole in the earth. Dirt has gathered around their feet. The sun set a while ago and they shuffle from foot to foot nervously though neither look nervous. Both are blank and grey, a mirror to the half-buried thing they are looking down at.

One of their noses is upturned and pink with cold, while the other has ears that poke out from underneath his hair. If anyone had been watching them—certainly, nobody was—they might have been mistaken to be deep in thought. This is not exactly the case. Rather, they are lost in the dirt, the mud, as they watch with careful eyes what they are about to bury.

They dug the hole a few days ago, in the honey-light of dusk, sweat slicked and calloused. Once they had finished, they sat back on their haunches and looked down into the dirt, breaths ballooning in their chests. Their eyes were dim in the growing shadows, a colour like the wisps of smoke curling into the faintly star speckled sky behind them—the smell of cooking meat on the air, a bristle of burning fur.

The one with the upturned nose looked at her offsider, seeing him in profile. His eyes were downcast, dull and jaded. His face shining with sweat, ears poking from feathered sweeps of hair.

"Brother Arc?" the one with the upturned nose asked, little more than a croak.

"Sister Callow," came the reply, a flux in the painting. Arc leaned back on his hands, mud seeping from between scrappy fingers. His legs slipped from underneath him, shifting so his knees cupped the ridge of the pit—calves dangling in the air, toes nudging the sodden, crumbling earth below.

Callow, nose scrunching at the sound of squelching mud, turned back to the hollow the earth. Her eyes glazed off the discarded shovel, rusted metal and duct-taped handle casted to rest in the dirt after hours of burrowing.

The quiet pulled in again, disturbed only by the heaving of the siblings chests. A gust roared through the trees, sending a shudder of whispers through their leaves and whipping the siblings' hair into their eyes, scrunched shut in a wince.

"When..." Callow's voice cowered and whittled out. She kept her eyes closed, shoulders scrunched to her jaw and scarf piling at her cheeks. "When do you think we will bury it?"

Arc made a sound, somewhere between a sigh and a thoughtful hum. He pushed his weight back onto his hands, stretching out with one foot to hook it through the shovels handle. Behind his knee, he brought the shovel to him and took it from his foot. "When we cannot wait any longer, Sister," he said, a gravelly chh as he forced the shovel into the dirt. "When we cannot wait any longer." With that, he pushed off the shovel and got to his feet, leaving Callow staring after him, rubbing the bloodied stump of her arm.

When the leaves begin to whisper again, the siblings sigh in unison—a part in the whole of the breeze. The thing in the pit squirms, just slightly. There are places were flesh pokes from the dark, ribbed material it's wrapped in. The skin is blood-drained and sticky. There is still some of the clear paste on Arc's hands from when he lay the thing into the soil, but he doesn't seem to mind.

They look down at the thing in the hollow, each holding a shovel in their only hand. The wounds are still fresh and it aches to look down at the thing in the pit, knowing it will only grow back. Still, it is better than the alternative. They have known assembly for so long and it's grown so very grueling—shells on their backs, carrying home wherever they go. Maybe one day the blood will be too much. For now, it isn't. For now, they lift their shovels and start to dig.