http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZweDwbJ_Ic

By the banks of the Arova, trawler men cast their nets by lamp light, a thousand fireflies skimming the pitch black water. Murmur Muck sat watching them, fingers caressing a bottle of rum lightly as though it were a fond friend or a lover. Her city slept and her world was at work, ready to bring in glittering fish carcasses with the pale light of dawn, the girl cast her thoughts to the events that had transpired a few months before and watched the water carefully.

The hand on her shoulder was as soft as a sigh. Murmur daren’t turn around and risk losing hold of the one comfort to be found on a night that stung like a whip. “It weren’t an accident were it?” said Murmur quietly and if the hand’s owner answered her, it was a whisper stolen by the wind and carried Eastwards. Murmur imagined Lena Muck standing on the banks, her prematurely grey hair whipping around her shoulders, her shaking hands extended towards the river, desperately yearning for a release. Release that would never be found on the land, not with the gollies and their laws. Dogs they call us, filth. Muck. She almost laughed “They think we’re Muck. An’ I suppose they’re right.”

“I missed you a lot this week, Ma,” continued the human, folding the coat around her. It was a man’s coat, lumpy and thick, far too big for her and patched and darned to bits. But it did it’s best to block out the light rain which the sky began to spit on her. “Ye would ‘ave gone spare- effin gollies. But I punched one, Ma, right in the mouth, a seventeen an’ all. An’ I spat on one too, big ol’ hunk of spit.” Suddenly it was as though something inside of her tightened, like skin stretched over a drum, tighter and tighter until she prayed something would give, to alleviate the overwhelming pain. “Why’s everything so shit?” she hissed, punching a knuckle into the ground.

The ground was soft due to the heavy rain saturating the ground and yet she didn’t stop, beating the dirt into itself, her fists like a silent scream as the force of her hand bruised her own knuckles. Flecks of mud flicked onto her face as she pounded with both arms, her whole torso reacting as she tried to force her hurt into the earth to bury it deep and make the elements feel the way she did, feel her intense anger and hate which bubbled and boiled white hot like a fire though the night was deathly cold like ice.

When her body cried out to her, and only then, did Murmur stop- crashing against the ground and spread out like a sacrifice. Her hands, her coat, her dress and her hair became sticky with wet, churned mud like rich creamy butter and her tired hand fisted a ball of mud. Shutting her eyes tight and curling into a foetal position, Murmur tried to cling onto a memory, one where her mother held her close and soothed her tears. She knew there was at least one, buried deep, sliding into the cracks of her memory behind the stench of booze, the swearing and the guttural sounds of fucking, the exchange of money, a pat on the head for little Murmur and her siblings as the man left and then the crying. The young girl had poured cups and cups of whiskey, rum, hell rubbing alcohol if that’s what it took-and pushed them into her mother’s shaking hands. Anything to stop the sobbing.

“It weren’t an accident,” she said again to the black river, her voice certain but quivering. “Shit Ma.” It was though she had been caught in a-half dream, feeling, hating but not quite seeing until today- when she had woken up finally for the first time. She stood slowly and inched closer to the water’s edge, the ghost-hand on her shoulder falling away, the comfort lost and battered by rainfall. The gollies had broken her mother, and Murmur had watched the slow disintegration. Even while she was alive, they had feasted on her body, helped her slowly fall away into rot. Murmur remembered identifying the swollen, bloated corpse of her mother- but realised now that while a corpse had been dragged out of the river, there had been nothing but a hollow, festering body to fall into it as well.

She thought of Turien Fendin, ready with his butchers knife to fight for his right to live in the city where he was born to the death, thought of him writhing on the floor at the hands of the gollies, thought of her Ma with the booze and the men, wailing into the river, sinking lower and lower into depression, into the bottle and finally into the Arova. She thought of a man his eyes dim with her mother's rum, shirt untucked, trousers falling and a hand around her arm, throwing her to the floor, a barrel of fish follows, and Murmur feels brine soaking into her clothes, she reeks, and feels safe from his touch.

In the rainy season the Arova was fat and swollen like eyes after the heavy fall of tears, nudging at the flood banks. She looked down and found a river at her feet. For a few moments, the buzz of the world stilled and the weight of oppression lifted, for a few moments. She spread her arms out and shut her eyes, feeling the rain against her like the cold kiss of life, wind whipping around a face already damp with tears. How easy it would be to simply step off and into the water, to let the river envelope her with its bitter caress and keep her safe that way that this golly run society never would. How easy it must have been for her Mother to fall, and to keep falling- to stop resisting the current and let it take her lifeless body wherever the river willed it.

Snapping her eyes open at the edge of the bank, she found her body poised to jump and straightened up, wrapping the coat tighter still around her. Hot rum coursed through her body as she finished the bottle. Murmur had been bruised and stamped on by her twenty short years, and it showed on her face- what could have been pretty girl battered by fists and by society. And she wore her bruises with pride, because while her cells and her skin might break, her spirit never would. She spat on the ground, every minute of her life spent in some act of defiance.

“I’ll make this right,” she growled, watching the dawn and the fishermen. Hoping the day’s catch would be large. “They may ‘ave broken ye but-” her voice caught in her throat as she whispered the last private promise between her and her mother, kissing the empty bottle of rum and throwing savagely it towards the river.

She watched it sink slowly, the reflected light from a lantern glowing a warm yellow until it was swallowed by inky darkness.