There is, in the idea of metamorphosis, an act of shedding the past; a change in structure that cuts a clear distinction between two selves. A rebirth occurs, because who you were is both dead, and alive. Schrödinger's cocoon. Until it unravels you are in limbo, and the outcome is suspended.
For Araxi Taheri, her metamorphosis didn't occur when half the population was wiped out, her older brother included, but instead when they were brought back. The world had ended, not with a bang or a whimper, but with a snap, and the survivors left in the wreckage had been suspended in time ever since. Time doesn't always heal all wounds, instead it leaves it to fester and worsen, and when you finally peel back the bandages masking the hidden collapse and attempt to fix the infection, it's already too late. There was a stillness, a holding of breath, a pause in the world. And then, with another snap, the silence breaks; there is an exhale. And in that exhale is change; a new age.
In a girl, beneath her dark, smooth hair, tanned skin, and calloused fingers, lies a current. A flow of electricity, nonexistent one moment, and awoken the next, almost like a snap of fingers. It burns in her veins and begs to be released, it's pounding in her bloodstream, screaming in her ears and—
—she silences the tremors with the heated metal of a lighter to her thigh.
"Give me that," Dani says from her side, eyes not wandering from the movie in front of them. Araxi hums, the only indication she's in the present and not consumed by what lurks beneath, and lifts the lighter from where it's pressed against the skin of her thigh that's exposed by the holes in her baggy jeans and passes it to her friend, before refocusing on the movie. Dani fumbles the preroll that she's popped out of its container, and as she lights it a cherry red ember ignites. She's taking a drag from it when the rumbling of a car interrupts them––two girls tucked away in the lower level of a parking garage, Dani's shitty sticker covered laptop in front of them, their backs against the wall. She chokes on the smoke in her lungs at the site of the car, but Araxi reaches out for her turn, uncaring of the vehicle which had begun to turn and exit. She takes a drag herself, holds it in like the world has been for the past half decade, and expels the smoke.
"I'm a goddamn force of nature," she mouths along with the monstrous girl on the screen, joint dangled between her fingers.
Dani's phone buzzes and Araxi continues to smoke, the smell of weed hangs around them and she grins lazily through the hazy cloud around her as the girl on screen continues her murderous rampage. The stilted conversation Dani is having beside her, with her mother judging by the Japanese that she speaks only with family, is muffled to her, as if underwater. The redhead on the screen holds her attention as she morphs from girl to monster, a gruesome transformation of breaking bones and ripped flesh. Blood is associated with girlhood, but most never go that far, never embrace the connection. To be a girl, to be a god, to be a monster; it's all the same.
Araxi draws her eyes away from the metamorphosis on her screen and to her friend beside her. "Little Dani has to run along home to dearest mumsy, huh?" she grins, face pressed against the knee drawn up to her chest.
Dani scowls and takes the joint back for one last hit. "Yeah, well not all of us have military moms and older brothers who've taught us how to handle ourselves. Besides, mom's neurotic, ya know. She's so damn terrified of those mutants the news is on about. Thinks I'm going to be jumped by some psycho high on supernatural abilities, or some shit".
"Maybe she thinks you're going to become one of the psychos."
Dani slants an unimpressed look towards her as she gets up and gathers her laptop and bag. Araxi watches her with hooded eyes and fiddles with the frayed edge of her doc laces. "Whatever, loser. See you next week. Unless your mom decides to send you off to Tehran to your aunt or whatever."
The smile on Araxi's face is amused, but too sharp to be fully genuine. "No, it's military school she's threatening me with now."
Dani doesn't seem to be paying attention as she types furiously on her phone, chipped black nails flying across the screen. "Oh, fun," she mutters and then glances up and grins. "Gotta run, if your brother finds out you got high again, I died last week and was never here."
"Don't get attacked by psycho mutants," Araxi calls after her retreating back.
"Fuck you!"
When the parking complex is finally deserted on her level, though she can still hear the echoing bangs of someone skateboarding on some level above her, she stretches out her legs and studies them. The rips in her jeans reveal a fresh burn on her thigh from earlier––it's small and not at all bad; she hadn't let the flame burn long enough and the metal afterwards was hot but not scorching––and the indents of her nails in her other knee. She rubs her hands over the crescent groves pressed into her tanned skin before turning over her palms. For a moment nothing happens, and she stares at her hands. Her knuckles are bruised from taking out her anger on the punching bag her mother set up in the apartment, and her finger tips are scratched raw from handling glass and covered in a multitude of hello kitty bandaids. The crossroad of veins in her wrist stare up at her, a warm green-blue that holds her gaze. There's a silence hanging around her; a pause in time. The humming that had been muffled by the weed in her system starts again; a white noise that steadily grows.
She watches passively, almost bored, as her skin lights up from within and lightning runs through her veins and erupts in a burst of static from her hand.
The display electricity that wraps around her fingers continues as her phone, lying beside her, begins to buzz, the screen lighting up to display a text from Dani, a Daily Bugle article attached. Mutants Among Us: 10 Ways to Keep Your Family Safe the heading reads. The phone buzzes again as another text from Dani comes in: lmao those mutants better watch out, Jameson is onto them.
The energy in her hand grows and grows and she watches silently as it explodes in sync with the lights overhead.
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When Araxi enters her apartment hours later, once the smell of weed is free from her clothes and her eyes are no longer droopy and bloodshot, she's hit with the aroma of rose water. Her mother stands at the stove, scooping spoonfuls of sholeh zard into glass cups.
"Finally home, I see," her mother says as she places the already filled glasses in front of her daughter along with cinnamon and pistachio slices. Araxi begins adding the cinnamon atop the yellow rice pudding in even grid lines, followed by some of the pistachio. "Were you with Dani?"
With her job done, Araxi grabs a glass of the sholeh zard for herself and settles into the dining table's chair, the flavors of rose, saffron, and cardamom erupting in her mouth. "Yeah," she answers through a mouthful, "we got boba."
Her mother huffed and began bustling around the kitchen, tidying up the counter and taking the pot to the sink to begin washing. Araxi watched her with lazy eyes as she continued eating spoonfuls of the sweet dish. Looking at Laleh Taheri was almost like looking into a mirror. Not only did they both possess the same dark and shiny hair, thick arched brows, tanned skin, and noses, but they also carried themselves in a similar demeanor. Her mother was a strong, stern woman, who's emotions, like her daughter, tended to range only from apathetically bored to curiously amused. She had been born in New Jersey to immigrant parents from Iran, before moving back from ages nine to twenty-two, before returning to the states with her new husband and her children's father.
From what Araxi had heard about her dad, he was more like her brother. While the women of the family were harsh and had ends you could cut yourself on, their boys were the softness they lacked. Her parents had both worked for SHIELD, her mother as a field agent and her father as a head scientist, and her dad had been well known for his jokes as well as his kindness towards all those around him. Mehdi was the same; too soft to mesh well with the cold dynamics of his mother and sister, too much worry and care, a gentle being despite his broad frame and martial arts knowledge. Mehdi 's pathway in SHIELD was where he strayed from the ghost of his father, taking up field work like his mother.
Before her mother could ask more about what she did with Dani, her brother walked through the kitchen doorway and spotted her. "Hey, trouble," he grinned, the childhood nickname that she had gotten accustomed to not hearing after five years still an easy habit for him. Araxi pretended not to notice him and turned back to her food, reaching for another serving before her mother smacked her hand with a dishcloth.
"Don't spoil your appetite," she scolded, despite allowing her to eat in the first place. "The Khans are coming over for dinner tonight. Best behavior, okay?"
"Cross my heart and hope to die," Araxi deadpanned. She scooted her chair back and brought her dish to the sink to clean before stomping off to her room with a sarcastic two fingered salute to her family.
"Does she not like the Khans," Mehdi questioned as he turned to his mother once Araxi disappeared, a furrowed dip to his brow.
"Oh no, she likes them well enough, as much as Araxi likes people."
"They have a daughter her age, right?" he pressed, leaning forward eagerly.
Ms. Taheri set down her rag and turned from the counter to fully face her son, a serious expression in place. "What are you plotting, Mehdi ?"
"Well, Araxi needs some friends..." he started nervously, eyes darting to the hallway as if Araxi herself would burst from her room and tear into him for suggesting she didn't have friends. Which would lead to him gently suggesting that she finds more socially acceptable friends, and then Araxi would argue that he didn't get to have a say in her life or friend choice when he had been dead for the past half decade and she was no longer a child. It was a frequent pattern of argument in the Taheri house. Mehdi would meddle, with good intention, but in a condescending way that would set Araxi off. Her cutting remarks always ended with harsh reminders of the time he missed, lost as dust as half of the world, his mother and sister included, continued on without him.
"Araxi doesn't like your plots," his mother said, but despite her unimpressed look and raised brow she didn't berate him more. Just as it was a fact that Araxi hated her brother's attempts to, as she called it, "stick his dumbass where it doesn't belong", it was also a fact that she needed some sort of intervention. But Mehdi 's approach was different from his mother's. Where he was gentle, she was harsh; him lenient and sad, she stern and unforgiving. Despite his method seeming more appealing, to Araxi, who was too similar to Laleh and had spent the last five years with only her, his ways were akin to someone dragging their nails across a chalkboard: excruciatingly awful, painfully useless, and sorely unwanted.
But Mehdi wasn't about to halt his attempts to help his little sister out, even if she wasn't as little as she used to be. "I just think that if she's fine with the Khans and they have a daughter that she could, you know, hang out with her more. And it works out well for everyone! Not only does she get a friend who doesn't drag her into random shit, and who's probably more resistant to being dragged into shit, but you get some adult friends too. And, well, manybe since they live in this building Araxi will be around more and I can, uh, see her more?" He trailed off at the end, looking downcast and no longer sounding as confident as he started as. "I just feel like she doesn't want anything to do with me anymore because I still see her as a little kid, but my last memories of her were of a little kid. And then I woke up and she's five years older and in high school and...and I just can't replace that image of her with the now if she won't even let me get to know the now."
His mother had been watching him vent passively, no ideas of her thoughts expressed on her page, and Mehdi fidgeted with the sleeves of his sweater as she gazed at him, finding it difficult to hold her stare. "You have a good heart, Mehdi -jan," she said at last, nodding at him. "And maybe you're right, maybe Kamala will be good for our Araxi. But don't force a friendship between them. That will only make Araxi push you further away." When she got a nod in confirmation from him she pushed a serving of sholeh zard to him. "Eat," she said as she got up to leave, "but leave room for dinner".
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authors note
me, writing the dynamic between Araxi and her brother and realizing they give me Jason Todd and Dick Grayson vibes: hmmmmm ✍️ interesting
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