No One Cries For The Lost

XIII: Mother's Little Astronaught

                                                                                         XIII

                                                                              Mother's Little

                                                                                 Astronaught

                                                                                     Day 193

"Neona?" No, no more dreams. "Neona." I feel a stick poke me in the face, at least, I hope it's a stick.

"Uhhnn, uhn?" I flicker my eyes open and look up at him, back fucking again, why am I not surprised?

"Neona." Caleb stands there, above my bed carved out in the snowdrift next to Martin, who lies curled up in a little furry ball next to me, "you awake?"

I blink my eyes, trying to rub one with my gloves only to remember there's blood on them from last night's impalement. Trying to climb a tree again to find more birds. And the resulting fall and stick through the forearm. It was no cake walk to cauterize and fix. Still, I feel like there's something in them, these eyes, probably a fucking ghost.

"Nope." I blankly reply as I lift my head.

"N-no, d-don't get up. Don't get up." He sets down and takes a seat on another, higher snowdrift next to me.

"Yeah, thanks, I was planning on it."

"Fuck, I'm gettin' too old."

I chuckle along with him at that. I'm not far behind him in that, thirty-nine, fifty-four comes fast after when you aren't expecting it.

"I'm fifty-five today."

I lie there and look up at the sky before his words actually sink into my mind, "you're fifty-five? Today?" I ask him.

"Yeah," he smiles, looking off to the distance.

"Today's the twenty-sixth." I think.

"Yeah. Somethin' like that."

I think about that for a moment and then start snickering, "you're a Pisces. You're a fucking Pisces. Of course, of fucking course you are. Why does that not surprise me?

"What are you?"

"Aquarius, I was born on the ninth."

"Oh, that explains why your so compassionate." He says, "and imaginative."

"That would explain why you're still around," I giggle.

"You know why I'm still around. I told you already."

"You don't give very satisfying answers. You're like a fucking riddle. You know that, right?" I share another little laugh withhim again as I look to him.

"Yeah," he laughs along, patting my thigh, "yeah, yeah, I know that."

"And not one of those fun ones either. Like they give you in a fortune cookie. Or you find in the young teens section at a Toys-R-Us." I keep laughing with him, the first laugh and the first non-hostile conversation I've been able to share with Caleb in a long while, "more like, a bad kind. Kinda like one of the ones you'd find at the back of a Winnipeg Sun. Or scribbled on the wall at the back of a BK washroom."

"Where you get all these fuckin' euphemisms from, huh?"

"I've been around. Had a colourful past. You should know, you talk about it all the fucking time."