Infinity Smashed: Carrying the Dead
Mar. 8th, 2014 09:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lb_leeThis story won the latest Free Money poll! It's an orphan from Spookathon, where Megan requested something involving a "mediator between the living and the dead;" it also covers my 'Life' prompt for the Stuff100 and 'moving' for Hurt/Comfort Bingo.
This story is an Infinity Smashed story, but doesn't require any context, though if you liked it, you might also like Third Language.
Carrying the Dead
Everyone had their own ways of dealing with change. Thomas had always found it best to go on as normally as possible. It worked when football season was over, it worked when Dad’s back blew, and it worked when you got dumped in another world with no mammals. He still did his morning workouts, even found a calisthenics group to join. (Most of them were old creakers who stretched muscles that he didn’t even have, but they found his high energy endearing and made up replacement exercises so he wouldn’t have to just stand there while they worked tentacle groups.) He worked in the afternoons and evening. And every night before he went to bed, he put another notch on his calendar stick, so he knew what day it really was.
Then it was Dia de los Muertos, and Thomas didn’t know what to do.
See, Dia de los Muertos was a big deal in his family. Every year, they’d pile into the Steed and drive down to Monterrey, where they’d see Tina and Tito and Cousin Jorge and Maribela and all the second cousins and cousins-removed and people they called ‘cousin’ because the real term was too complicated. There’d be a whole field of marigolds, and they’d cook and talk about the living relatives, and then they’d head to their part of the cemetery to talk about the dead ones.
A couple years back, Thomas had gotten a bit snotty, because of course he was too old and clever to be into talking about old dead people he never got to meet. (Well, except for Cousin Gordo, but he was an asshole before he married his truck to a tree, and Thomas didn’t see how death would improve him any.) But now, faced with the prospect of spending the holiday alone in Monsterville, he couldn’t pretend normal. He wasn’t going to get his cheeks pinched in Monterrey, not this year. Maybe not any year.
Apparently he was upset enough that it broke through the body language barrier.
“You’re not eating like usual,” his favorite sweetmeat seller signed. “You sick?”
“No.” Thomas fumbled for a minute for words. “It… special day of home. Day of dead people.”
“A holiday?” The seller preened its wings thoughtfully. “Have you met the Dead-Carrier Beetle family?”
“Uh. No.” Thomas knew who they were, of course. You couldn’t live in Treehouse and not know about the Dead-Carrier Beetle family. But they ate dead people and everyone adored them and the combo was a little too weird for him.
“Oh, you should! This sounds like their business, and I can introduce you; my sibling’s mate’s cousin’s third offspring—”
Which is how he ended up talking to a giant blue beetle thing about Dia de los Muertos. It—well, she; Dead-Carrier beetles apparently had four genders, and three of them were girls—had pink swirls drawn on her shell, and she was actually rather pretty, if you didn’t think about her diet. She was also extraordinarily polite, taking pains to use only two legs for slow, clear signing.
“A holiday for the dead? To remember them fondly? Yes, we’ve seen that! Here, people do that in winter, mostly.” It was currently late spring. “But I can help with that, if it pleases you.”
Thomas paused. Treehouse had a weird gift system; it was a huge breach of manners to try and pay for a gift, or even suggest it, but Thomas still hadn’t gotten good enough to tell whether something was a gift or a sale unless he asked. So he did, with an apologetic gesture because he knew how rude it was.
The beetle froze for a moment, then gently, “Gift. You are still new in town.”
Even with the Dead-Carrier Beetle family’s help, Thomas figured it’d be a pretty half-assed Dia de los Muertos. Due to his work schedule and still getting established, he could only afford to take one day. Marigolds didn’t grow in Treehouse, sugar didn’t exist, and flour was expensive and made out of potato things. Thomas got some anyway, determined to manage some kind of pan de muertos, even if he couldn’t afford honey for it. Oh well. If his dead relatives could get out here, they’d just have to accept his limitations.
As he slaved at the communal kitchens, Thomas realized just how much work the holiday was. If there was any yeast at the market, Thomas hadn’t found it, and his pan de muertos turned more into tortillas de muertos. Also, they were purple. But whatever, Thomas was fourteen, Great-Great Auntie Lucilia and Cousin Gordo could just freaking deal, okay.
As he worked, the locals got curious, glancing his way, pausing to watch, handing him things he was looking for. A couple asked what he was doing, and after he explained, they left him alone and explained to others so they wouldn’t bother him. The Dead-Carrier Beetle even showed up to help, using two legs, mouthparts, and tiny little tools to flip the tortillas.
Once the Beetle showed up, everyone seemed to assume that it was okay to join in too, and suddenly Thomas was surrounded by heaps of half-assed purple tortillas. Maybe he should’ve been weirded out by tentacle monsters and dinosaurs trying to cook with him, but it didn’t. It was starting to feel like a community affair again, like it should be.
Then they trooped out to make the altar. The public square—which was actually round—had been co-opted. This part turned out easier than the cooking, because Dead-Carrier Beetles, he found out, lived in large paper nests they made by chewing up wood pulp. Thomas never would’ve considered bread a more foreign concept than papier-mâché, but go figure. The altar maybe looked a little brown, it was definitely an altar. And it turned out that while marigolds may not have grown in Treehouse, dandelions totally did.
By this point, they were drawing a small crowd.
The next part stymied Thomas for a bit. He didn’t have any memorabilia of the dead. He didn’t have any memorabilia of much of anything, just his older brother Marcus’s old dog tags around his neck, so he put them on the altar for Tia Lucita who’d served in ‘Nam and died later. As for the rest, he just tried to imagine them as clearly as he could. (Well, except Cousin Gordo. Screw Cousin Gordo.)
When he finally finished the altar, he saw that the small crowd had turned into a large one, and everyone was looking at him expectantly, waiting for an explanation of why he had all this purple flatbread and an altar made of regurgitated wood-pulp and dandelions. Oops.
The Beetle scuttled to him. She had cleaned off her markings and covered herself in pale dust—her working outfit. “Would you like me to tell them to go? It can be a private thing.”
Thomas thought about it. “No. Stay. Is family thing, but this okay. Just let me think to say.”
The beetle signed a nod and scuttled off to explain to the crowd. And then Thomas told the stories about the dead.
The old stories, like old Tio Juan and the donkey and the time Enrique sunk the car, and the new ones like Tia Lucita coming back from ‘Nam a woman and Cousin Gordo cursing the president on his deathbed. There were a lot of translation fumbles (how the hell did you translate ‘pick-up truck’?) but everyone listened raptly.
Eventually, Thomas ran out of stories, but he still didn’t feel done. Then, hesitantly, the land-squid geezer who did calisthenics with him every morning slithered up and signed, “My brother died this year. May I tell his stories?”
Thomas said yes, and she did. Then someone else came up. And someone else after that. Thomas sat on the grass and watched stories about the time that Iron-Jaw and Muscle-Back got into a fight over a fish, and even if this wasn’t how he’d planned to spend this holiday, this was okay. He was okay.
“Thanks,” he signed to the Dead-Carrier Beetle.
She waved him off. “It is our duty to carry the dead with us into our lives. It’s the way of things.” She nudged him and joked, “You could join my family.”
Thomas laughed, and they sat in silence and watched the stories.
This story is an Infinity Smashed story, but doesn't require any context, though if you liked it, you might also like Third Language.
Carrying the Dead
Everyone had their own ways of dealing with change. Thomas had always found it best to go on as normally as possible. It worked when football season was over, it worked when Dad’s back blew, and it worked when you got dumped in another world with no mammals. He still did his morning workouts, even found a calisthenics group to join. (Most of them were old creakers who stretched muscles that he didn’t even have, but they found his high energy endearing and made up replacement exercises so he wouldn’t have to just stand there while they worked tentacle groups.) He worked in the afternoons and evening. And every night before he went to bed, he put another notch on his calendar stick, so he knew what day it really was.
Then it was Dia de los Muertos, and Thomas didn’t know what to do.
See, Dia de los Muertos was a big deal in his family. Every year, they’d pile into the Steed and drive down to Monterrey, where they’d see Tina and Tito and Cousin Jorge and Maribela and all the second cousins and cousins-removed and people they called ‘cousin’ because the real term was too complicated. There’d be a whole field of marigolds, and they’d cook and talk about the living relatives, and then they’d head to their part of the cemetery to talk about the dead ones.
A couple years back, Thomas had gotten a bit snotty, because of course he was too old and clever to be into talking about old dead people he never got to meet. (Well, except for Cousin Gordo, but he was an asshole before he married his truck to a tree, and Thomas didn’t see how death would improve him any.) But now, faced with the prospect of spending the holiday alone in Monsterville, he couldn’t pretend normal. He wasn’t going to get his cheeks pinched in Monterrey, not this year. Maybe not any year.
Apparently he was upset enough that it broke through the body language barrier.
“You’re not eating like usual,” his favorite sweetmeat seller signed. “You sick?”
“No.” Thomas fumbled for a minute for words. “It… special day of home. Day of dead people.”
“A holiday?” The seller preened its wings thoughtfully. “Have you met the Dead-Carrier Beetle family?”
“Uh. No.” Thomas knew who they were, of course. You couldn’t live in Treehouse and not know about the Dead-Carrier Beetle family. But they ate dead people and everyone adored them and the combo was a little too weird for him.
“Oh, you should! This sounds like their business, and I can introduce you; my sibling’s mate’s cousin’s third offspring—”
Which is how he ended up talking to a giant blue beetle thing about Dia de los Muertos. It—well, she; Dead-Carrier beetles apparently had four genders, and three of them were girls—had pink swirls drawn on her shell, and she was actually rather pretty, if you didn’t think about her diet. She was also extraordinarily polite, taking pains to use only two legs for slow, clear signing.
“A holiday for the dead? To remember them fondly? Yes, we’ve seen that! Here, people do that in winter, mostly.” It was currently late spring. “But I can help with that, if it pleases you.”
Thomas paused. Treehouse had a weird gift system; it was a huge breach of manners to try and pay for a gift, or even suggest it, but Thomas still hadn’t gotten good enough to tell whether something was a gift or a sale unless he asked. So he did, with an apologetic gesture because he knew how rude it was.
The beetle froze for a moment, then gently, “Gift. You are still new in town.”
Even with the Dead-Carrier Beetle family’s help, Thomas figured it’d be a pretty half-assed Dia de los Muertos. Due to his work schedule and still getting established, he could only afford to take one day. Marigolds didn’t grow in Treehouse, sugar didn’t exist, and flour was expensive and made out of potato things. Thomas got some anyway, determined to manage some kind of pan de muertos, even if he couldn’t afford honey for it. Oh well. If his dead relatives could get out here, they’d just have to accept his limitations.
As he slaved at the communal kitchens, Thomas realized just how much work the holiday was. If there was any yeast at the market, Thomas hadn’t found it, and his pan de muertos turned more into tortillas de muertos. Also, they were purple. But whatever, Thomas was fourteen, Great-Great Auntie Lucilia and Cousin Gordo could just freaking deal, okay.
As he worked, the locals got curious, glancing his way, pausing to watch, handing him things he was looking for. A couple asked what he was doing, and after he explained, they left him alone and explained to others so they wouldn’t bother him. The Dead-Carrier Beetle even showed up to help, using two legs, mouthparts, and tiny little tools to flip the tortillas.
Once the Beetle showed up, everyone seemed to assume that it was okay to join in too, and suddenly Thomas was surrounded by heaps of half-assed purple tortillas. Maybe he should’ve been weirded out by tentacle monsters and dinosaurs trying to cook with him, but it didn’t. It was starting to feel like a community affair again, like it should be.
Then they trooped out to make the altar. The public square—which was actually round—had been co-opted. This part turned out easier than the cooking, because Dead-Carrier Beetles, he found out, lived in large paper nests they made by chewing up wood pulp. Thomas never would’ve considered bread a more foreign concept than papier-mâché, but go figure. The altar maybe looked a little brown, it was definitely an altar. And it turned out that while marigolds may not have grown in Treehouse, dandelions totally did.
By this point, they were drawing a small crowd.
The next part stymied Thomas for a bit. He didn’t have any memorabilia of the dead. He didn’t have any memorabilia of much of anything, just his older brother Marcus’s old dog tags around his neck, so he put them on the altar for Tia Lucita who’d served in ‘Nam and died later. As for the rest, he just tried to imagine them as clearly as he could. (Well, except Cousin Gordo. Screw Cousin Gordo.)
When he finally finished the altar, he saw that the small crowd had turned into a large one, and everyone was looking at him expectantly, waiting for an explanation of why he had all this purple flatbread and an altar made of regurgitated wood-pulp and dandelions. Oops.
The Beetle scuttled to him. She had cleaned off her markings and covered herself in pale dust—her working outfit. “Would you like me to tell them to go? It can be a private thing.”
Thomas thought about it. “No. Stay. Is family thing, but this okay. Just let me think to say.”
The beetle signed a nod and scuttled off to explain to the crowd. And then Thomas told the stories about the dead.
The old stories, like old Tio Juan and the donkey and the time Enrique sunk the car, and the new ones like Tia Lucita coming back from ‘Nam a woman and Cousin Gordo cursing the president on his deathbed. There were a lot of translation fumbles (how the hell did you translate ‘pick-up truck’?) but everyone listened raptly.
Eventually, Thomas ran out of stories, but he still didn’t feel done. Then, hesitantly, the land-squid geezer who did calisthenics with him every morning slithered up and signed, “My brother died this year. May I tell his stories?”
Thomas said yes, and she did. Then someone else came up. And someone else after that. Thomas sat on the grass and watched stories about the time that Iron-Jaw and Muscle-Back got into a fight over a fish, and even if this wasn’t how he’d planned to spend this holiday, this was okay. He was okay.
“Thanks,” he signed to the Dead-Carrier Beetle.
She waved him off. “It is our duty to carry the dead with us into our lives. It’s the way of things.” She nudged him and joked, “You could join my family.”
Thomas laughed, and they sat in silence and watched the stories.
no subject
Date: 2014-03-09 06:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-03-09 10:48 pm (UTC)--Rogan