The Bandage and the Stone

The siren fell silent two hours ago. We are holed up under the slabs of a dead water treatment plant, right on the edge of the Obsidian Sector.

The cold stiffens our joints. Lio has fallen asleep with his head against the wall, his dried blood forming a dark crust beneath his swollen nose. The kid's breath whistles in the gloom.

Jolanda holds a roll of filthy gauze. Her palms are raw. The leather of the drum has torn her skin down to the dermis, a fleshly ransom for summoning Marisol's cadence under the continuous fire of Stability. She pulls on the end of the fabric with her teeth.

Her fingers slip. The bandage falls back onto the concrete.

I reach out with my right hand. The one the fire set into volcanic rock. I want to grab the gauze, wedge the knot, offer her this paltry repair after the fury of the viaduct.

My fingers brush her wrist. The heat of my obsidian makes the blood sizzle on the surface of her wound.

Jolanda flinches. A deep wrinkle scores her forehead. She does not pull her arm away. She endures this offensive without uttering the slightest sigh.

I freeze my gesture. I am a siege weapon, a walking hearth designed to pierce armor plating, and I find myself inept at tying a simple bandage on an ally's flesh without inflicting an additional burn. The strength I carry calcines everything.

I lower my arm. I step back toward the back of the cavity.

Jolanda retrieves the fabric. She tightens the knot herself. A thread of reddened saliva beads at the corner of her chapped lip.

This impotence cracks like a whip.

We remain mute, listening to the wind batter the rusted ventilation grille. The great Mutation demanded by our Forgotten takes root here. Not in the explosions. In the disgust of a body too ardent to heal anyone. In these open wounds one must bind oneself with teeth in a grimy basement.

Jolanda smooths the end of her bandage.

"It's fine. Get some sleep."

I sit on the stone and stare at my fists in the dark.