**FIGMA P***
Sarah MacLean had been friends with Catherine since they were in high school in the Municipal college where Sarah's mother and Catherine's aunt, Jenn, taught literature classes. Jenn was enthusiastic about mythology, Greek-roman art and was to lead them into a medieval study of ancient artifacts. That was where Catherine got to learn about symbolism and the art of warfare. She would corner Sarah into a dark bunker behind the school to read ancient texts. They read tattered copies of palimpsests, traced historical warfares, and spoke with Sarah's mother about studying archeology at the university.
Her face flushed.
"What are you girls thinking. Of course, archeology is good. Would have studied it if not for the fact that I needed a job badly. I went for what gives me more opportunities. Your time is different."
For days, Catherine thinks about it. She wasn't sure what she wanted then. People change. Life happened. She flunks out her only copy of Inferno and concentrates on the thinking before her. He wants to be a scientist like most of the people in Figma P but her thoughts, seem, aren't enough to guide her. Her aunt walked in holding a pallet, the chicken soup cooking in the kitchen churning and smothered her stomach. She donned her head and reached for her hands.
"You're worried but you don't have to do it if you don't want to. Before Alex left me in college he was a Paleo artist but that was not making him money and your mother just died. He needed to do something else. He had two babies."
The tension between them froze after she mentioned her father. Catherine had resented him since the day he took her down here but she ended up loving her aunt more and the poetry they recite at night under the stars.
"You can choose another major. Okay, darling?"
The air between them dampened and she could hear sounds of birds, Wren, dove, and others she couldn't see through the window. Jenn moved closer to her, the chicken cooking in the kitchen.
"I can't disappoint, Sarah. We do everything together."
"I know. But you don't have to sacrifice your life for another person's love. She'll understand."
"I love archeology too and I'm going to do it. Just that I need to think about my future too. Life seems to be like a duality. I think I exist not only in this realm and I want to understand my existence here. It feels like something greater is calling me."
"Here comes, Sarah." Jenn pointed to the window. She is still behind the maple tree standing close to their little garden of exotic plants. They both helped her plant them.
"You know, Figma P is small compared to the other islands surrounding Smallsvile and we are the best among humans here. Our ancestors migrated here when the werewolf kingdom started like a zoonosis. It was Guero the first, our forefather, who ruled Smallsvile after the last kingdom collapsed. You know what caused that war?"
Sarah walked in holding her bag and a half-rotten jasmine flower. Her hands are dirty. She's been picking specimens again. That's what they do when they go to picnics together. She grabbed a seat because she had been asking the same question. Why would a failed bonding lead to war?
How did she know what they were talking about?
She only analyzed the situation then concluded it was a conversation on either love or failed bonding. Both of their eyes have dilated and there is tension in the room.
Catherine shifted, the bedding rumpled to her puzzled self, and answered to the best of her ability as fourteen years old.
"I think," her eyes brows sloshed out like when petals don over another. That's common with her when she's thinking hard.
"I think the war was their way of making another statement. Wars have done that for lots of nations."
"And what's that?" Jenn asked.
"Superiority. Isn't that part of what Darwin said?"
"It depends," Sarah said. "If superiority is all to life then there's nothing to be called altruism. So it's not only about superiority. Wars happened because of altruism."
Catherine smiled knowing she's enjoying the conversation, knowing Sarah will soon start throwing pillows, knowing her aunt will leave them in the end, and knowing they'll all be saying something from the truth.
It went on like that for an hour then she blotted out.
"What then is the obvious truth we are seeking?"
***
During their sophomore years in College, Catherine majored in astrobiology after falling in love with the work of Judith Spencer on rediscovering Thea, a sister to Earth and Sarah went to forensic pathology. They both thought afterward they could help change the islands. They've been seeing news on killings at the borders, humans fleeing Smallsvile, some wanting to interbreed with the werewolves, about a community of outcast packs scattered in the Islands assassinating humans, hybrids, and protesting against the free union. They were in an economic policy lecture one day when she decided she needed to learn how to fight. Taylor came in handy. He was a boxer and her aunt's finance and a poet at night. He taught her how to fight and read poetry to them at night.
One night he told her she was ready.
"For what?" She asked, dropping the last ode of Yeast beside the flickering fire outside their tent.
"For the world beyond now. Look at the stars, you know them more than I do but I could write you a poem about their chaos, sorry but not about why they are here."
He held on tenderly to Jean, her hair flowing behind his hands, Catherine glanced at them and he said loudly.
"I love your aunty but I'm sorry I'll marry her and the world will ask me why."
"I see. So you're saying you've taught me all I needed and that poetry is the next time?" She giggled and ran out towards the open sea knowing he'll want to throw her in the sand again.
***
The day she discovered it was one of the protesters who poisoned her mother after she gave birth to her and Elvira, she couldn't sleep and didn't want to stay another day in Figma P. He wasn't nabbed and had moved to Smallsvile. An older friend of Sarah who interned under him in neurosurgery told them he saw him but his description was vague.
It was later known he had been in a love triangle with the doctor which hinted to them a possibility of his claim being wrong.
"I saw him wanting to kiss her," he said. "But your mother resisted and he turned away, his face angry. I wondered why a doctor would want to kiss his pregnant patient." He giggled and hit his head on the breakable table they sat at. The other inmates walking away with assistance smiled sheepishly at him. He pushed away from the table between them and shouted.
"You should believe me. Martin did it. I'm not mad…"
***
"After your mum's autopsy, a trace of blood in her temporal lobe showed she was on a Psychostimulants. That helps within the Prefrontal Cortex to improve cognitive function."
"So, if what Jay said is true then he might have injected her?"
"Probably. He might want to use that to get your mum to fall in love with him if what Jay said was true."
"I need to find him too. What memory does he want to bring back and why?"
"They have allies in Laguna Island. They get everything from them."
"The so-called elites."
"Yeah. But Jay was never sure if it was Dr. Martin he saw and nobody came out to say they saw him too. There was nothing on the CCTV cameras. Do you want me to come with you? I think your father should tell you more about your mother."
"He never really said much about her when we were kids. Perhaps he said much more to Elvira since She's with him."
"Perhaps. Glad you want to do this. I wish I could reunite with my father too, someday."
"But he died."
"Yeah. We'll reunite in the realms if there's any out there."
"You bitch," she giggled then placed her fingers on her head. "I want to meet my mother too."
***
Two days before her journey, Catherine went back to NPH- National Psychiatric Hospital to visit and speak with Jay Leon. She met a gurney rolling him out in a half-closed bag. Nobody was there to accompany him from his family. His doctor walked up to her and tucked a note into her pocket.
"Jay said you'll need this when next you are here. He was a good man."
She patted her right shoulder and walked back into the hospital. He was ousted into a van and drove off.
"Are they gonna cremate that too," a boy asked while eating his ice cream comb.
"I don't know," his mother whispered. He kept quiet for a while puzzled by the situation, then went back to join the other kids playing in the hospital's park.