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CHAPTER NINE Teen Idle
WARNING: This chapter contains mass death + mentions of violence and mistreatment against Indigenous people. Please read with caution.
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THE DAY CECELIA'S LIFE ceased to be normal started off like any other. That may have been cliché to say, but it was true: it wasn't like she'd seen shadows in her peripherals the moment she'd rolled out of bed. Nobody had been uncharacteristically morose, like they'd known what was coming. And the sky may have been gray, but it wasn't a gray of warning; it was just cloudy.
As usual, they ate pemmican for breakfast—the rations had been particularly low during these past few weeks. The water that ran from their taps was still a muddy brown, so Iná collected water from the well. Até went fishing with the other men, and Cecelia completed her morning chores. There may have been more smoke in the air than usual—so much, in fact, that she worked with a mask tied around her face—but ever since the factory had set down its roots, that had become ordinary. So was the increasing bout of sickness that had ravaged the elders on the reservation; practically everyone above the age of sixty was now prone to intense coughing fits. Cecelia, five years old, barely remembered a time when this wasn't the case. When the sky was blue, and the air was clear.
When she finished her chores, she decided to head to the river. In the past, she'd find turtles within the murky depths, though lately, more and more of them were turning up dead. Once, Unci had accompanied her on this short walk, but when she'd spotted the corpse being carried along by the current, she'd cried. Turtles represented the great Grandmother Earth, after all, and their deaths were certainly something to be mourned.
Cecelia kept going to the river, regardless. Every time she found a live turtle, it was a blessing; every time one was dead, it was a curse. The planet must be fracturing under her feet, fissures branching out from the river. Soon, the entire world would be consumed, and its shattering would be the product of their white neighbours.
She had to squint through the fog to make out the murky water. It was brown as the water that spilled from their faucets, full of dying life. The plants that had once taken root in the underwater soil were wilting. The bugs that had once buzzed on its surface had sunk. The occasional fish, sometimes mutated, floated by listlessly. There was a reason Até and the others now had to go so far. Their own waters could not be trusted anymore.
That was when she saw it. Penetrating the haze of fog was a bright white light, almost like a beacon. It was coming from the factory—she could see the building's fuzzy edges. It shot into the sky, spreading, growing, overtaking the entirety of the plant. Cecelia stumbled backwards, confused, looking back to the rez wildly. "Iná—" she began.
The factory exploded. Cecelia only had enough time to see fires bloom across from her before she was knocked back by a shockwave so powerful, she passed out in the air. It consumed everything and everyone in the West River Sioux Reservation—the houses, the shops, the people.
