Tea and a chat with death

Shirin leaned over the stove, letting the warm steam from the boiling tea heat her face. It was a rare comfort in their decrepit flat, especially in the dead of winter.

She could hear coughing emanating from the one bedroom, and closed her eyes against it. The familiar bile of guilt rose up her throat, and she got the milk out early just to have something to do.

The tea slowly bubbled, and Shirin watched it carefully, almost artistically dropping in cardamom, sugar, mint. Her father used to scold her on how weak her tea was, but Soraya couldn't tell the difference with her illness.

Shirin gently dropped in the tea and wondered if he'd approve of her tea now. Their father had always insisted he didn't have an addiction. That he controlled his reliance on the hallucinogenic cigarettes, they didn't control him.

Then the army came, with their steady supply of drugs and their demand for anyone not dead of plague and above the age of eighteen.

Shirin and Soraya had watched him go, with Soraya tightening her arms around Shirin, as Shirin had cried and cried. Their mother, whose grip on reality had loosened early in marriage, had decorated the house for a party.

Ten years later, the war was still on, minus any claims of nobility or success. Their father's army money had disappeared when their mother had, and now the twins just barely survived.

The tea had finally thickened and Shirin poured it into three cups, minding the tea bags that threatened to splash over.

Quickly, she took one cup and left the flat, gently handing it to the blind woman that lived next door.

The woman mumbled her thanks and Shirin ducked out, bringing a second cup to her bedroom.

Soraya was still coughing, her once tanned skin pale and deathly, shaking from a cold that hid behind her fever.

"Hey, here you go." Shirin helped her sit up and gently gave her the tea. They'd run out of medicine a long, long time ago, and it was mostly prayers that made Shirin's tea special. Hopes that somehow, Soraya would just get better on her own.

Soraya's eyes looked muddled, and she futilely reached for her throat, probably in unimaginable pain.

Shirin looked away, that same old shame making a reappearance. Partly to prove that she wasn't a burden like her mother, she'd enlisted in the Medical Corps. A small collective of doctors and nurses that travelled from one wartorn city to the next to treat people. Hospitals, schools, any other kind of sanctuary had collapsed in the first four years of the war, so the Medical Corps was Shirin's chance to save lives and make a difference.

Then the Blue Plague hit. There had been plagues before, but the devastation of the Blue Plague, so named for the blue veins that crawled up the infected victims' bodies, was catastrophic.

Nobody could detect a cause, but contact with blood and bodily fluids was one suspect, since the first person in the Medical Corps to get it was a young doctor. His patient had sprayed blood on his face while coughing, and that doctor had transmitted it to others.

Shirin had been lucky: sick for less than a day after getting infected and then miraculously healed. She didn't understand how she'd gotten sick, but none of that mattered. She'd raced home, desperate to protect her sister and neighbours from it.

Which is what brought it home. Within a day of Shirin's arrival, Soraya, Mr. and Mrs. Maki, and many others fell ill, mysteriously. Most died.

Soraya was still clinging to life three weeks later.

Shirin gently wiped her fevered brow, so used to the fatigue and filth and general unhappiness that it truly felt like she was out of tears. "How are you feeling today?"

Soraya shot her a confused look, but it was mingled with amusement. "Amazing." She rasped, turning her face to cough into her hand. "And you?"

"Oh, just fantastic." Shirin muttered, taking a long drink from her now cold tea. "I'm just enjoying a pleasant day at the beach with my sister, and some lovely tea."

Soraya shivered, making the bed creak. "Pleasant day at the North Pole. And the tea is shit."

"So ungrateful," Shirin tsked. "I really couldn't care less, just so you know, we're going to drink it again tomorrow, and then again, and then-"

"Are you trying to get me to die faster?" Soraya wheezed out the suggestion of a laugh, and Shirin giggled too.

Humour had very rarely visited their grim and struggling household until the disappearance of their parents. After that, dark, very unfunny humour dominated conversation.

"Worth a try, you stubborn dumbass," Shirin said, getting closer to the furnace that her sister had become.

"I'm not the dumbass between us-" Soraya began indignantly before another coughing fit drowned out her words.

Shirin said nothing, just felt Soraya's whole body tremble.

"Apparently we're getting bombed next week." She said, just loud enough for Soraya to catch it.

"Bombed?" Another weak rasp, and Shirin poured out a glass of water for her sister.

They'd fought like cats and dogs as children, over dolls or books or who was mother's favourite. And yet, their unchanging routine of caring for each other just happened naturally now.

While Soraya gulped it down, Shirin continued. "Yeah, Mrs.Donaldson, who's the white woman in-"

"- from W42, I know-" Soraya impatiently waved a hand.

"-heard from a soldier who wrote to her boyfriend-"

"Darian?"

"-Hector, keep up." Shirin rolled her eyes. "That we should all be evacuating the city. Because the enemy's fixed some of their prewar Venus planes, and they'll be flying over us soon. Since this is one of the last cities that-"

"Isn't a pile of shit?"

"-exists, they'll be bombing here first. They want to leave the capital for last, so that the Minister has time to surrender."

"Oh good. They'll take out hundreds of innocents and then maybe the vipers in charge will surrender." Soraya griped, handing back the glass and Shirin smiled at her fire, pleased with the unexpected energy in her voice.

Soraya used to be a brilliant public speaker prior to the war and sickness. Her voice was velvety smooth, just deep enough to sound narrator-like, and just light enough to sound musical.

After weeks of coughing and damage, Shirin doubted that voice would ever sound musical again. All of Soraya's passionate debates, protests, speeches, hinting at a great future had come to a halt.

Shirin worried about that a lot. Soraya had never felt good looking enough, and had nothing but her books and her silver tongue. And now most of her books had been lost, and her voice was a broken initiation of its former glory.

"Did... you hear me?" Soraya was gasping and it shook Shirin out of her daze.

"Huh?" Shirin looked at her, puzzled.

Soraya's face did that twisted, half frowning, half-smiling thing. "You..should...leave." She breathed out carefully, seemingly determined to trigger a coughing fit.

"Oh, yes. Finally, thank you for your permission, that's exactly what I've been waiting for." Shirin said evenly, unwilling to show even the slightest hint of anger. Because the idea that she'd abandon her sister wasn't just inconceivable, it was never happening.

Soraya took in a deep breath, but when she spoke, her voice was still shattered. "Rin, I'm not well enough to make it out of here. You are. There's no reason for you-" Another coughing fit.

It gave Shirin the one thing she'd never had in their razor-sharp arguments in the past: time.

"You're getting better every day. You're not half as bad as when you first got it, I think you're beating it. I'm not leaving without you, you ass." Shirin forced herself to sound calm instead of terrified.

Why would she want to be alone? Alive, alone, and miserable? Forever carrying an illness?

"I won't...be better in..time." Soraya's eyes were red from the coughing, but Shirin knew shame played into it too. Soraya felt the loss of her graceful voice much more keenly.

"I don't care." Shirin declared, crossing her arms. "And I'll just spread plague amongst refugees that are fleeing, there's really no reason to-"

"Then kill everyone. But you need to live." Soraya said, and both of them stared at the other, each refusing to yield.

"If you want me to leave, you better make plans to come with me, or we can both die in rubble. I'm not leaving." Shirin put as much steel as she could muster into her voice.

"God-why do you-" More coughing. "See? Mother nature's just trying to let me die so you can leave already!"

"Or Fate is trying to get you to shut up, because it knows you're going to lose." Shirin replied, and saw Soraya's eyes flutter closed. "Just rest, we can argue later."

That revived Tweedledum. "No, we-we can argue now. If you won't leave without me, then prove to me we can leave together in less than a week." Soraya demanded, eyes misting over with fever again. Shirin knew it would only be a little while until Soraya faded into one of her delirious fazes again.

"Easy." Shirin said and Soraya raised an eyebrow, prompting.

"I'll tell you when you wake up again, sister." Shirin pressed a kiss to Soraya's falling brow, gently getting up.

Soraya shuddered freshly with cold and Shirin left, trying to figure this out. She'd need something like a cart, or a car. Hell, a wheelchair would do in a pinch. After that, they either needed to leave, or hide with enough supplies.

A shelter, so maybe a tent? Where would she steal all these things from?

Before she knew it, she was on the bottom steps of their building, and accidentally, her eyes went downwards.

There had used to be a basement. the entrance had gotten buried in rubble, but they, and the old woman next door were practically the only ones here.

So she could dig out the entrance, stash supplies there, and pray that they outlasted the bombing. Soraya would no doubt find a hundred holes in that plan, but she saw no other way to help them both survive.

With a sigh, Shirin rolled up her sleeves, pushing aside the cluster of bricks that blocked her from the basement entrance.

As she shifted the bricks, the terrifying thought did occur to her about how they'd dig their way out if the building came down.

One problem at a time. She told herself sternly, using a bent shovel she'd found to dig out more bricks and dirt.

Survive the plague, then survive the bombing, then survive being down there. Then survive getting out, then survive the empty city.

One shovel swing at a time, one problem at a time.

She wondered if they'd even survive that first problem when she leaned back, exhausted, staring out the dark entrance into the dusty, yellowed street. Children played on undisturbed ground that would be cratered this time next week.

That would be a city of the sleeping. A city of the dead, with bodies covered in a fine layer of dust, like the corpses at Vesuvius were coated in ash.

She breathed out sharply and went back to digging. One problem at a time.