antebellum [t. riddle]

epilogue ii.

april - july 1945

"please state your full name for the record."

"sicaria masego edwards." 

"and your age?"

"nineteen." click. flash. quills began scratching. 

"your place of birth?"

"new york city, the united states of america."

"of which you are a citizen, yes?"

"correct."

"miss edwards, will you describe for us the nature of your relationship with the magical congress of the united states of america?"

she inhaled a long breath. rehearsed, sicaria spoke: "on the advice of counsel, and due to my continuing obligations under section 267 of the classified operations and personnel protection act of 1901, I'm not able to characterize the specific nature of my relationship with the congress at this time." she licked her lips before shifting her eyes down to the next paragraph on the first of a few notecards the tulloch's left before her. she made a show of dragging her finger along the bottom of each word to emphasize the insincerity. "the presiding panel has been provided with a sealed record of the details of my authorization through the department of congressional intelligence, pursuant to the agreement reached between the department and this tribunal, which I am told is sufficient for the purposes of these proceedings." 

the weeks following sicaria's awakening in the hospital were quite an unwelcome snap back to familiar reality.

sicaria's consciousness surfaced slowly, feeling her environment slowly as she began to regain her rudimentary senses. faint pressure began to arise— first the weight of the soft sheets against her raw skin, then the coolness of air hitting her face, then the needle in her arm. sound came quickly after, followed by a brightening pale glow seeping just beyond her eyelids. there were several minutes of quiet, sicaria sitting perfectly still listening only to the sound of the iv dripping and her slow, heavy breaths, as she began to work her strength toward opening her eyes.

the first emotion she felt was a very active derision for whoever had left her stacks of previous days newspapers on the stand at her bedside. as though she should care. her neck still felt quite to heavy to lift, so she was stuck peering through squinted eyes at large, bold-print headlines. not that she could make out what they read, her vision was still too blurred. but she could make out the photos, just barely. silhouettes of important looking witches and wizards gathered round microphones. panels and tribunals aplenty, she assumed. the bureaucratic impulse contemporary magical society had toward the unnaturally evil still, even after two decades of living it herself, surprised her. she now had firsthand empirical evidence that violence must be met with equal violence, and that talk and paperwork could not, and had not saved the world.

sicaria was certain it was picquery's face plastered across those pages, but the other shapes were more difficult to make out. 

very soon after she had awakened, a mediwitch and two nurse-elves entered the room. sicaria heard the rattle of a doorknob and jerked her head up instinctively. her vision immediately blurred, head swimming and dizzy.

before speaking, the mediwitch cast an array of spells and diagnostics fussily checking over her ability to move and breathe. the mediwitch spoke, concentration not breaking from the complex wand movements she had been casting over sicaria's head. the light hurt sicaria's eyes, so she shut them. "do you know who you are?" american, distinctly, she recognized.

she was already chained. they knew who she was. they just had to be sure she knew who she was. "sicaria edwards," she said without opening her eyes.

without emotion, the mediwitch continued questioning. "do you have any recollection what happened to you?"