Page 79 of Damian & Jun, Episodes 9-12
Orphans outside the phrontistery
An antistrophe
Without a first verse
Did our progenitors leave in a hearse
Or on a curse?
Left us no purse
There must be a duoverse
Making us a dream
Remembering a counter scheme
Where we were clean
Children of a salient queen
“That’s good, though I have no idea what some of those words mean.”
Jun jumped, startled.
Collin was standing in the doorway of the kitchen.
Jun bit his lip and shrugged. It was rough. It needed a steady drum line, something like a funeral march. Maybe he could sample Mozart’s Requiem. “Something that came to me when I was reading these rhyming word lists.”
“You read word lists?”
“I heard there was this famous rapper who did that, so I started doing it. Phrontistery means a place of learning.”
“And antistrophe?”
“The second verse in a Greek choral ode. It felt fitting.”
“So that’s why it doesn’t have a first verse.” Collin nodded. “Sometimes I feel like that, not knowing much about my dad, where our family came from, wondering where he is now, if he is alive.”
Jun nodded and shrugged. There wasn’t much to say to all that. “It’s not finished. If you didn’t understand it, maybe I should leave it.”
“No, keep it; it’s good.” Collin put his hands into his pockets, looking around at the dust. “This place feels like it made orphans.”
Episode 12
Damian
Damian rubbed his eyes and checked his calendar on the desk in his office. It was Monday. The start of the work week again. It felt like he’d lived an eon just between the last Monday and this one. He counted the days off. Twenty-four days. It had really only been twenty-four days since Jun had been kidnapped. No wonder there was so much uncertainty still, so many open loops. It hadn’t even been a full four weeks.
As for Dalia and the kids crashing back into his life, that had only started the Friday before last. Eleven days. He was feeling every minute of them. The welts across his back from Richard were grounding. The headache behind his eyes was all stress. He had never realized how much he prized his silence and time alone until he had none of it. The weekend in The Residency had been sanity saving, but now he was back on kid duty.
Cedric and Anna needed a break. Jun was with Collin, getting started on permanent housing for 5N and Armada and Habibi. Damian had to work.
So the kids were coming to his office. Could he hire a hit man to find Thaddeus? It wasn’t like he could ask a babysitter to take on the risk of a gun-wielding criminal threat. He didn’t trust the police to keep the kids safe with a cruiser parked out on a street or making regular passes. If Thaddeus could find Armada and Betti here—unlikely—he would have to get past building security and then Damian’s bodyguard of the day out in the lobby. That was a level of protection he trusted.
Damian grabbed his phone. Breakfast was getting delivered. While the phone rang, he logged into his office group hub and reserved the larger conference room for the day. As much as he didn’t like putting the responsibility on Armada, he was going to have to split care duties with her for the day.
Food ordered, he prepped the conference room: put away breakable items, hooked up the projector screen to a laptop, and loaded a streaming service with kids’ movies. In one corner he made himself a space where he could work. He’d have to step out for calls and to retrieve files. But he wouldn’t be leaving the kids completely on their own with Armada.
