When Sepp had first been given the button to sow onto his cuff, he hadn't noticed that it was anything but plain brass. The more easily over-looked, the better after all. But he'd quickly taken to fiddling with as he walked to his destination, and now, as he stood in line for the guard station, he was tracing the faint raised shape with his index finger over and over and over. He wasn't sure what shape it had been originally, though he kept trying to guess. There was at least two sharp tips, maybe three. A star, perhaps? Maybe a bird, two wings and a beak. The answer had long since been worn away by the other nervous fingers before him. It was a little reassuring. They had lived to pass on the button, after all.
Two of the men ahead of him stamped their feet unevenly, trying to keep warm in the crisp morning air. One blew into his gloved hands, then grumbled something to the other, which caused a scoff of laughter in agreement. Sepp couldn't register what they said, whether because they left their voices low or because he was too on edge to focus on it, he wasn't sure. Either way, he didn't need to try and stave off the cold like they did. Underneath his heavy wool coat, he was sweating, radiating an unnatural heat. Could the men ahead of him feel it? The men in line with him feel it? Could they see the sweat on his brow? Did they suspect anything?
Sepp stopped tracing the not-bird not-star and took in a quiet gasp of a breath when a guard finally left the gatehouse. He looked totally unaffected by the cold in his crisp uniform. It stood out against the winter landscape, completely stark and black against the snow and camouflaged buildings.
Sepp turned his gaze towards somewhere in the distance, trying to look uninterested, but knew he was failing. The other men were chatting with each other, relaxing. Their ease came natural to them. This was just another day at the border on their way to work. He stood out as much as the guard's uniform and there was nothing he could do about it.
"You. Next"
The guard was talking to him.
For a moment Sepp just stared at his evaporating breath in the air, heart having stopped in his chest. The guard stared back, expression revealing nothing, which didn't calm Sepp's nerves. After he'd recovered somewhat from his own foolishness, Sepp shoved his hand into his pocket and half-tripped forward. The second he grasped onto his identification papers, they turned slightly moist from his sweat. Sepp handed them to the guard, all the while wondering if he was doing so "normally". How did doing something like that "normally" look? He looked stubbornly at the ground, studying the gravel, and his index finger once more began to trace the not-bird not-star on the button.
The guard looked at the papers largely with disinterest, and then handed them back to Sepp. "Stand with your arms up, legs apart," he said.
It was about then, after Sepp had used his other hand to take back his identification papers and stuff them into his pocket, that he felt the catch of the button box come loose.
The guard was, hopefully, ignorant of Sepp's panic. So Sepp swallowed, but did what he was told. As long as he could keep his hands in fists it'd be fine. This time of year, it'd look like he was just keeping warm, and the guard didn't really seem to suspect him of anything. This was standard. Surely it wouldn't be thorough.
The guard pat his waist first, then down his right leg, then back up again on his left. He started on his right arm and when he got to the hand he said simply, "Please open your palms."
Sepp did what he was told without allowing himself to think. The suspicion would harm him more than anything if he hesitated. The top half of the button fell immediately, and the microform almost certainly did with it. Sepp didn't react.
For the longest second of Sepp's entire life, the guard hesitated in his pat down, and Sepp knew that it was because he'd seen the object fall. But then he continued like nothing happened. He felt the sleeve of Sepp's other arm and then stepped aside.
"You're all clear." The guard motioned Sepp through the border. "Move along."
Sepp paused, wondering if the guard was really letting him through and if he should try and get the button and microform. All of his life was on the stupid microform. If he didn't have it, then getting over the border might be for nothing. But the guard was staring at him expectantly and he heard the man behind him grumble, so what choice did he have? Sepp stumbled over the border without the only thing he needed.
"Oh! Wait, sir!"
Sepp had only gone a few steps when his stomach fell to the Earth as the guard yelled out to him. He turned around, expecting to find the guard with backup, ready to arrest him. Somehow. Instead, the guard held out the button in a gloved hand, and the microform still nestled in it's hollow cavity thankfully. Sepp blinked at it.
"You lost your button, sir." the guard said.
Sepp looked at him, questioningly, still uncertain if this was some sort of trap. However, he quickly realized it didn't make much of a difference. He took his button back and snapped it back into place.
The guard left without further comment and that left Sepp with more questions than answers. Was that guard one of 'us'? he wondered, or just too stupid to notice the microform... There was of course, the third option of a kind stranger willing to overlook the strange boy in an oversized overcoat desperately trying to get over the border.
Perhaps there was hope yet.
"Do you think people will know of us? Once we're gone?"
Amna paused in her work to look at the woman laying in her lap. Inaya's brown eyes were wide with concern as she looked up at her lover, searchingly, showing how seriously she meant the question. Amna tilted her head slightly so she could hide the smile at the corner of her lip. "Little Abrar will speak of us until he is old and gray," she answered before she began to carve again.
"But what about after that?" Inaya pushed herself up and Amna sighed as her work was further interrupted. "What about long, long after that?" Inaya looked out over the river, across to the unseeable other bank, "Will they know of us when our bones are… just dirt?"
Amna blinked, wondering what had suddenly turned her usually soft-spoken, slightly flighty wife so introspective. She set aside the shell she'd almost finished carving and slid forward on the mat. "When our bones are dirt?" Amna echoed Inaya’s words as she gathered Inaya's hair gently in her hands.
“Well, I don’t know what happens to bones. But, whatever happens to them.”
Amna let out a breath through her nose that was almost a laugh. She combed her fingers through the soft waves of Inaya’s hair, so unlike the tight curls of her own. During this time of year, her own hair took on a lighter golden shade thanks to the sun, but Inaya’s stayed it’s night black. Inaya was usually the one to play with Amna's hair, to see what new styles she could try. Amna, in turn, liked to take shells and clay and fashion what jewelery she could to adorn Inaya with. She thought that Inaya deserved to be draped in all of the finery one could afford, and she did her best with what her mind could create.
Thinking of those things now, in this context, she supposed that it would all be forgotten. Very quickly, too. Little Abrar was young now, only six years old, but she had been six once. Now she was six and twenty. Perhaps Little Abrar would have children to remember them. And then… that was the end of it. Would those children remember their great aunts fondly enough to tell their children? And then their grand-children? Even if they did how long could that carry on for?
Realistically, the memories of the Inaya and Amna who lived on this Earth would be short. She could see why the idea had captured Inaya’s attention. Amna carefully placed Inaya’s hair over her one shoulder and then hugged her around the waist, carefully slipping her hands under the many layers of necklaces she’d made for her. Inaya happily leaned on her, placing her hands over Amna’s.
“I don’t know,” Amna finally answered, “I don’t think so.” It was better to answer honestly. Even if, sometime in the future, they found their bones before they were dirt, they wouldn’t know that Amna loved to adorn her wife with jewelery or that Inaya plaited Amna’s hair, so would they know them at all?
Inaya stiffened a little. “It’s a little scary to think, isn’t it?”
Amna kissed Inaya’s shoulder. “A little," she admitted.
They didn’t speak for a while. Amna watched the river lazily go by, feeling Inaya breathe softly against her.
“It is good to have lived, though, isn’t it?” Inaya said.
Amna smiled, and took in a deep breath. She could smell the fires of the early evening, as everyone prepared to cook the evening meals. "It is," she said. "It's good to have lived now. With you."
Inaya had to awkwardly crane her neck to give Amna her look of... well it was a cross of deep affection and disgust. "I am the sentimental one."
Amna allowed herself a giggle.
Inaya took herself out of Amna's arms. "Weren't you working on something? I think I interrupted."
Amna turned to pick up the her tool and shell from the mat, but the little shell was nowhere to be found. The tool, at least, was where she'd left it. It would've been more difficult to replace.
"I’m sorry. I’m sure it was beautiful," Inaya told her, as she helped Amna up.
Amna pressed a kiss to her lip. "I’ll make you twenty like them. Maybe fifty. I think I could make a skirt of them."
Inaya grinned. "You get far too ambitious. I’m not even worthy of fifty."
"You are,” Amna assured her, "Every one of them."
· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·A sweaty student excitedly gestures over a man who looks, perhaps, a little ill-suited to be traipizing out in the desert at “his age”. Though, maybe, it’s the desert that has aged him so. He trips a little in the sand, his hat being blown off so that his weathered, brown skin is exposed to the sun as he approches the hole being dug.
All the work in the area hs been paused as people have gathered on the spot. The find is not big. In fact, it's very small. Almost, inconsequential. There are other markers in the hole, each indicating other things of interest that might be more obviously interesting to some. However, to the archeologists and others gathered around to take a peak, it's this one, tiny find that's worth halting their work for. As the weathered man approches, the crowd parts to let him through. Most know who he is, but some just know by the atmosphere that he's someone worthy of respect, F. A. Khan.
He reaches one of the white indicators and knows immediately it's the one. A little to it's left, less than a quarter of the size of the indicater itself, is a shell. An insignificant little shell. Except it is significant because it reaches from the past into the future to let all of these people know that, really, even now, we haven't changed all that much. This tiny shell is a button.
· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·Fact check!! Please don’t count this towards my word count lol. I just want to do some fact vs fiction here!