Lava: The Legend of the Volcanoes

S E V E N T H E R U P T I O N: T H E T R A G E D Y

"Is it by chance one lives truly on earth?

Not on Earth forever: here just for a little while,

Be it jade, it breaks

Be it gold, it gets old,

Be it quetzal plumage, it breaks

Not on Earth forever; just for a little while we are here."

-aztec poem

Popocatépetl practically glowed of happiness. As soon as the aztecs fell, he went back to Ocotelulco, where Iztaccíhuatl would be waiting for him to start a life together.

The trip flew by in a blur.

He was smiling when he arrived to the city, in the height of the night. They had sent a messenger weeks ago-Citlatépetl-to announce the victory, and Popocatépetl was expecting celebrations. The rest of the battalion would come the next day, too tired to keep walking that night.

But he encountered black curtains in the windows, and the few people that saw him broke down and cried. Outside of the chief's house swarmed a flood of people. Popocatépetl started to feel Worry's first strikes. Could something have happened in his absence?

People parted like an ocean, clearing a path for him-or maybe just afraid, they were looking at him as if he were a ghost and needed to get inside. They whispered with their hands clamping their mouths shut, some cried, many just looked angrily or sadly at him. 

The door was wide open, and Popocatépetl walked in.

In the center of the living room was Iztaccíhuatl, but not like he expected to see her. She was lying on a stone table. Her face was peaceful, deeply asleep. Her hair styled around her like a brilliant, shiny black curtain. Cempasúchil were braided on it, and a white dress covered her body. Snow-why snow?- flew in from the windows. The flowers gave him the idea that she wasn't sleeping, for they were only used for the dead.

The chief was talking to somebody, and he turned around when the gasps warned him of his presence. His face, his whole self, paled.

"She thought you were dead," he whispered.

Popocatépetl felt cold. Everything he could hear was his heartbeat, exploding madly everywhere. He walked to Iztaccíhuatl, touching lightly her arm. It was cold, frozen still. 

She wouldn't kill herself.

He was sure.

"Who told her that?," he asked, his voice strained.

"Citlatépetl. We haven't seen him since her death."

Zyanya started weeping. Popocatépetl didn't do anything, he just watched Iz's sleeping face, feeling something wet on his own. He took her hand. It was just as he remembered it.

If you ignored the coldness.

"No," his voice was shattered. "No, no, just no! Iz. Iz, I know you're there. Iz, please. Wake up. Iz!"

He felt a hand on his shoulder. It was the chief.

"Son. There isn't anything you can do. She's dead."

Popocatépetl broke then, broke in front of her. An agonic scream escaped from his lips, his shoulders shook with a broken man's sobs.

People could say anything they wanted about their magical relationship, but he couldn't bring her back from the dead.

Popocatépetl took Iztaccíhuatl's body that night, convinced that she would wake up-and if she did, she couldn't be in a pipiltzin tomb.

He carried her softly on his amrs, took her to the mountains, took her to their meeting point. 

There he leaned her body in front of the rock she'd been sitting on the first time they met. Holding a torch, he sat in front of her.

Watching her for eternity.

*Cempasúchil: Orange/yellow flower that only flowers (heh) in October/November, and it's used in the Day Of The Dead altars. That day, or really all month, people put up altars to remember their loved ones, in the belief that they will come back to visit them one night. I don't know it they already did that back in Popo and Izzy's time, consider it a creative license xD