BROKEN OPEN

It was supposed to be a normal, quiet night in the apartment. Kasi, daughter of Isaŕ, sat at the kitchen island taking notes out of a textbook under the white light of the battered crystal chandelier. Outside the windows was a soothing blackness, punctuated by little spots of light and the occasional rumble of a passing vehicle. The clock ticked rhythmically along. The room smelled of the old rug and fold-out bed behind her and the warm, meaty pie the family had eaten. A scratched-up stereo cabinet warbled out pleasant music in an ancient tongue.

Then, there was this awful thump.

It was what Kasi's mom might call a "gravitational event". The impact was weighty, enough to resonate across the concrete floor, impossible to ignore. And it was horribly wet and meaty, in a way that made her soft orange fur stand on end. And that was before the sharp, acrid smell met her nose. Grimacing, Kasi turned around, knowing what she saw wouldn't be pretty.

It was horribly exactly what she had thought it was. A black-furred form was crumpled on the floor beside the bed, holding his matted and dripping head. Kasi stood there, frozen, some part of her refusing to see the broken fevarian as her father. It couldn't be Dawa, son of Ikan; Dawa was always strong, and unyielding, and exactly where he was supposed to be. Not ... not kneeling in a growing pool of blood. He warbled out a pitiful, sicky noise of pain, like a starving pup.

The bathroom door to her left flew open, and Kasi's mom, Isaŕ, daughter of Ganu, ran in. She quickly took stock of the situation, came over to kneel beside Dawa, and started rapid-firing questions like if she got enough of them out they'd patch up the wound. The next door, to the pups' room, also opened, and her sibling, Wali, scion of Dawa, stumbled in, bleary-eyed, with worry spilling openly across their face. They rubbed their heavy eyes, then, with slow, deliberate steps, they made their way to sit beside their dad.

"Kasi, my daughter, ping Roba, if you would?" her mom asked as she hefted Dawa's arms over her shoulders and helped him shakily to his hind paws. Then, she carried him over to the bathroom.

While she did, Kasi did as she was told and took out her messenger for a quick, scatterbrained text to her mother. Wali dug some towels, carefully embroidered with roses, out of a drawer and laid them over the mess on the floor. Both siblings stared at the towels as they stained and darkened. When they were soaked through, Wali picked them up, then plucked out an object lying underneath them; a scale, with tiny tufts of fur still glued to its edges. They started to carry the pile back to the laundry, but then they stopped. They dug out the scale, gently wrapped one of the stained towels around it, and tucked it into their pocket.

"Why?" Kasi asked.

Wali blinked at her. "Do you remember the Pig Warrior story Dad told us when we were little?" they asked in a hollow voice.

Kasi shook her head.

"Well, there was this farmer, who raised livestock. One day, his son asked him, 'Father, how can you bear to end the lives of these defenseless creatures that you yourself have raised?'.

"The farmer gave him a sad smile, 'I do not end them. I break the bodies apart, and give the pieces to myself and my children. A little bit of every pig I've raised lives on in me. Now, we fight together.'"

Wali sniffed, "I want to have a piece of Dad so he'll fight with me even after ..." They swallowed hard.

Kasi wiped the sweat off her palms onto her trousers, then threw her arms around her sibling. "You're so weird. He would love that."

Wali wrapped their blue cloak over Kasi's shoulders. She leaned into them.

"I'm really scared." they said.

Kasi hesitated. "... I am too."

It took the siblings twenty minutes to clean up the whole trail of blood. It took multiple passes, with soap, with water, with disinfectant, scrubbed thoroughly along the rough floor. Kasi's mom signaled her a few times from the bathroom for items: more towels, a glass of water, a bag of chewy ginger candy. Kasi did her best to hand the items over without looking in, or paying too much attention to what her mom was doing. She just couldn't let herself think about what was going on, or a void of unbattleable terror yawned open in her chest and threatened to swallow her whole. So, with nothing else to do, she went back to her reading at the kitchen island, trying to convince herself that fluid dynamics was what she really cared about right now. Better than her mom's book on epidemiology for the fiftieth time. Wali just sat on the end of the fold-out bed and watched their legs swing.

Both siblings kept glancing back at the front door, on the other side of the room from the bed. After a small eternity the clock reported as ten minutes, Roba, daughter of Fele, stumbled in through it. Her neck was bowed, her brown-gray fur was dirty and dark, and she carried the rank stench of sweat and fear. She dropped her bags and her leather cloak heavily on the bed, and tiredly lifted one paw to greet them. "How's he doing?" she asked, her trademark calmness colored with frenetic energy.

"I don't know; Mom hasn't ..."

The bathroom door opened, and Isaŕ stepped out, with Dawa leaning against her. His nose was drenched in reddish slime, there was a heavy bandage wrapped over his temple, and he was breathing like he had run a marathon; but still the familiar fervor twinkled in his dark eyes.

"I'm ... okay." he panted, "But ... going back to bed now."

Roba came over to take his other arm, and together, the two mothers helped him into bed. Then, they came over to join their kids around the island, under the sharp glimmer of the light.

"So, no hospital trip tonight, at least." Isaŕ announced in a whisper. "Moderate nasal damage, and one of the damn - scales - broke off, and I don't know if it'll heal right. We should contact the team in the morning."

"If they have time." Roba groused, "Fifteen new cases today."

"Well, if you'd just pull rank ..."

"You know I won't." Roba replied firmly. "We're just a family, suffering like all the others. My past work should have no bearing on how we make it through this."

Isaŕ muttered to herself and thumbed her notebook but did not make further comments known. Kasi reread the same sentence about frictionless fluids for the third time. The clock ticked. Antibacterials warred with the lingering scent of blood, stabbing at eachother through the cool air, impossible to escape. The light flickered.

Kasi closed the book. "I'm going to bed. You should, too, Mom; you've earned a hero's rest."

Isaŕ chuckled, and rubbed Kasi's shoulder. "Thanks. Sleep well, my daughter."

Kasi dreamed all night of red raindrops running down her snout.