A little oneshot I thought about while writing Zemo- I’ve decided to put it here.
Zemo tells an audience of children all about Sokovia, how the earth there was rich and matted, and all around them tall grass would spin out crackling sounds.
That if you walk far enough into the rising mountains, till you could only see the tops of the low terrace houses and the smoke spiraling up lazily from your house chimney, and you closed your eyes: you’d hear the rise and fall of hissing grass, they’d turn in huge ocean waves as the wind blew.
He would name all the mountain ridges, from the snowy peaks, all the way to the parts where the ice melted and trickled down into streams, gathering into cold rivers and bubbling springs. The water would be a pale green from afar, and a hazy yellow up close, reflecting the small brown rocks that lined the bottom.
He’d tell them that where the river mouth was, the water was flowing clear and crisp, and children used to drink from it and catch tadpoles. A kilometer down, where the bustle of the town was, the river would be sun-warmed and algae infested, swirling lazily around and releasing the deep grassy perfume of the hills, saturating the air. In summer this was even more so.
When the plum and apple trees were ripe you could pick the fruits as they came bobbing down the river. The children would stand at the banks and fish them out with long nets, and even those that were partially rotten would be taken back home.
When the sun rose you could hear the song of the Stieglitz- the goldfinches, all across the valley. And the Gimplel with their red bellies and the Blaumeise, the rotund little scoundrels with their small beaks.
There’d be roads of crunching gravel and houses built on hills, stacked up like a mound of uneven books, the steps and rooftops cascading down into flatland where the bridge crosses the river and meets land.
You could harvest berries from the mountains, any berry was the right one, all were ripe and burst into sugary water in your mouth. You could pluck them straight from the stems, collect bunches and bunches, eating and spitting out the seeds as you went.
When the apple flowers bloomed he would wear crowns of them in his hair, spun by the maids that worked for his mother and father. They smelt delicate and sweet, like roses but without the dampness, and just a hint of fresh apple skins. When he was young he had thought they were cherry blossoms, for they looked so much alike. And he would tell the children in a conspiratorial whisper, that these were better than cherry blossoms, for they flourished for months and months instead of a mere week.
And then the children, in wonder and amazement, would tug at his sleeves, asking him to point out his country on the map. Zemo’s gaze would drift away, his face would settle into the mould of its suffering... Sokovia was gone from the maps, would only exist in his memory.
Slowly, the children would see that he was drifting away, they would lose interest and run away to play together, leaving him alone with his thoughts.
Sitting alone, Zemo thinks of fires burning and towns flying, snow melting under tremendous heat. He remembers water evaporating, berries and flowers crushed under stampeding feet, and the smell of smoke. The grass is no more, the roads and the rooftops are no more, they’ve been covered by wet concrete.