The Company Town

“It’s a beautiful sunset.” The sudden words pull Mara from her fixation on the pinks and oranges decorating Haventown’s sky, her hands dropping from the gold cross around her neck that she had been fiddling with. She turns around from her place atop the cement picnic table and she sees a fellow young woman with tight, curly brunette hair and dark skin.

“One in a million,” she says to the newcomer, though it isn’t quite true. The skies had only just started to regain such stunning hues in the past few years. Before then, the sky had been a sickly gray. But that was before the gracious intervention of Shepard Industries, which put a miraculous halt to the total destruction of Earth and its inhabitants.

“How was your shift, Lilith?” Mara asks. Lilith is still wearing the God-awful yellow vest that signified she had just left the Shepard warehouse. That, coupled with the exhaustion clearly written on her pinched face and engraved into her reddened eyes, tells Mara everything that she needs to know: it’d been a long shift. Too long with too little patience and too few breaks and too loud machinery that doesn’t quiet even for the thirty-minute lunch break.

“We won’t live to see a million sunsets, so they’re all special, aren’t they?” she says in response to her earlier statement, and then she climbs up onto the picnic table next to Mara. As one, they turn back to view the sky. Its majesty is such a stark contrast from the crumbling town that rests below it.

Their legs touch -- softly, barely, delicately. Mara wishes that she felt anything from it, but there was only the bone-deep, leaden exhaustion that echoed in her partner’s face.

“I guess that’s one way to look at it.”

Lilith hums, then says, “Eden died today. On our shift, I mean. Heart attack. Keeled right over.”

Mara’s heart sinks, “You’re kidding.” Eden was a sweet woman. Too old to be working, but she had a granddaughter to look out for. It’s unfortunate that she spent her last moments in the place that wore her down so efficiently.

“I wish. Management didn’t even do anything for at least twenty minutes. They have cameras everywhere -- they caught Sam when he was taking too long to walk back to his station.”

The accusation is obvious -- too obvious, but it is not outright incriminating. Still, Lilith shouldn’t be speaking like this.

“Who’s going to take in her kid?” she asks instead of replying fully.

It was a valid question with valid phrasing. Jem, just thirteen years old, was basically Eden’s child, after all. The girl's biological parents certainly weren’t around to do the job.

Mara can feel the movement indicating a shrug, “Don’t know. Guess the government will take her. Or maybe they’ll decide she’s old enough to work.” It wasn’t like anyone here had any money to spare to take in an extra mouth to feed and keep Jem from the warehouses. Mara knew that. So why did she feel so bitter over it?

“Kid deserves better.”

“Yeah, and Eden died trying to give her that better.” Lilith’s voice isn’t rising, but it is incensed. “She withered away in that warehouse for years. And for what?”

“You need to be careful.”

“And you need to care!” Lilith shoots back. “I just-- I don’t understand you sometimes, Mara. I really don’t. Aren’t you tired of being an Atlas for Shepard, carrying too heavy burdens for too long?”

Of course she is, but she isn’t stupid enough to say it. That’s how you end up like poor Sam, who was a little too vocal after he was reprimanded for his irresponsible use of time. Everyone knew his missing-persons poster was a sinister warning more than it was anything else.

Shepard Industries may have been their savior, once upon a time, but it is clear that the company is something far more menacing and imperious now.

“I care about the people here,” she answers, her words coming from careful deliberation. “I care about you.” Because Lilith needs her own category, doesn’t she?

This response tears a horrible half-sigh, half-growl from Lilith’s throat, and Mara can’t find the strength within herself to turn away from the slowly darkening sky, with its blushing pinks going blood red. A few seconds pass in tense silence, and Mara wonders if she should have risked saying something more?

“I care about you, too,” finally comes the quiet admission. “You scare me sometimes. The way you never show your anger. It’s like you are never upset, but I know you are. It can’t be good to keep that bottled up inside.”

It’s also not good to work over sixty hours a week with no benefits, but here they are.

“You have to adapt to what you’re given,” Mara says simply. “Of course I’m upset. I always am, these days. But expressing anger over it….” It’s dangerous. She didn’t have to say that for Lilith to hear it, though.

Lilith sighs, “I don’t want to fight with you. I want to give you something, actually.”

“You do?”

“Don’t sound so surprised. I’m not the cheapskate you think I am.”

“Maybe it’d be better if you were.” That earns her a sharp jab to the shoulder. The stinging pain was well-worth the barb.

“Stop playing around and look at me already.” Mara does as instructed and turns in time to see Lilith unclasp the silver chain around her neck that Mara had not previously noticed. As she removes it, a heart-shaped locket reveals itself from beneath her shirt’s collar. It’s a simple thing with not much decoration other than the delicate violet engraved into its silver casing.

“Oh, Lord, Lilith. You didn’t!” Horror spreads like a wildfire in a summer drought in her stomach. It crawls all around her at the sight of such a shiny locket.

“It’s not real silver,” Lilith says, like it should reassure her of anything. “And I don’t regret it. I love you, Mara, and I want to show it to you. Will you let me show it to you?”

The tears in her eyes were stubborn enough to fall. And Lilith had had the gall to accuse her of not showing her emotions!

“I’m so mad at you right now,” she says.

“But you’ll let me put it on you, right?”

Instead of verbally confirming anything, Mara gathers her silky hair into one hand and pulls it aside, and then she faces away from Lilith to give her better access to her neck.

There’s a sharp intake of breath from Lilith, but then she is quick to move. The heart-shaped locket dangles in front of Mara’s eyes for just a second before it lowers and settles coolly on her chest, some inches below her cross necklace. Feather-light fingers dance on the nape of her neck and she is given goosebumps. There’s a click of the clasp and then the fingers move to gently take Mara’s hair from her hand, lifting it over the chain and letting it fall across her shoulders. Those same fingers tangle themselves in her hair for just a moment, softly, like they were touching the rarest of treasures, and then they move to cup Mara’s face and tilt her back to look into Lilith’s devoted, love-stricken eyes.

“You’re everything,” she whispers. “Everything, you hear me? I would buy you one thousand lockets if I could.” Then, her hands leave Mara’s face to grasp at the locket and open it. Mara only mourns the loss of the caring touch for an instant as Lilith shows her what is inside.

It’s a picture of the two of them, smiling and young and still in school. Their arms are wrapped around each other, squeezing them as close to the other as possible, as if they could be split apart without a moment’s notice. They were probably fourteen in the photo, a few years before they had to drop out of school to help pay bills.

The tears that had been gathering in Mara’s eyes finally fall, and then abruptly stop in shock at Lilith’s next words:

“Can you consider this an engagement ring?”

“Wh-what?” There’s no way she heard that properly.

“I want to get married. I want to be with you forever.”

“I-I would need to get you a not-ring too--”

“No, don’t worry about that--”

“You deserve something nice,” she cuts her off. She grabs the first chain around her neck -- the one with the cross -- and she pulls it off.

“Your mother’s necklace? Mara, I can’t take that from you.”

“You aren’t,” she says earnestly. “It’ll be with me always. With my heart. So will you let me show you that you’re my heart?”

It’s Lilith’s turn to go misty-eyed and she accepts. They mirror their previous interaction, only Lilith doesn’t have to pull her hair away. When Mara clasps it together and tilts her head back to face her, she brings her fiancée in for a slow, desperate kiss.

When they pull away, they rest their foreheads together and grin. Somehow, they aren’t exhausted anymore.

“We’re engaged,” Lilith breathes.

“We’re engaged,” Mara affirms.

Above them, the sun has finally set over Haventown, enshrouding them in darkness. Before them, the Shepard warehouse lights remain alit, and hundreds of workers continue through their grueling shift.