a narrative ;

[caoineadh]

It starts when she's ten and they're sitting in the departure lounge at Montréal-Trudeau. Clio is sullen, in a way that most other people would call quiet but her parents know her better and just because she isn't kicking up a fuss doesn't mean she's happy. Eamon slips off under the pretence of getting coffee for himself and Teagan, and returns with a cheap, disposable camera that he deposits into Clio's lap.

She blinks, turns the camera over in her hands and then looks up a him with a silent question.

"Thought it might give you something to do," Eamon answers, with a smile that lets Clio know he understands her mood. It's not that she doesn't love her family, and it's not that she doesn't have fun while visiting them at their homes in Ireland, it's just that she always feels slightly uncomfortable in the rural areas, surrounding by rolling hills and deep forests. Clio has always eyed them warily, with a strange understanding that told her if she walked in, she might not come out.

(She will understand later, when the stories of the banshee haunting the forests make sense to her. The uncomfortable pull in her chest that she'd always resisted; she does not want to be that kind of sidhe.)

"It will, thanks!" Her smile is bright as she turns her attention to the brief instructions on the camera packaging. It doesn't seem too difficult to use, and after a moment she's taken the packaging off and folded it carefully to dispose of later.

The first photo she takes is off her mother and father, smiling as they watch her play with the camera.

~

The flash is bright, followed quickly by a laugh and childish shriek of indignation. The next photo is of the ground, taken accidentally and at an awkward angle as Clio runs away from Erica after having taken a photo of the birthday girl with a slice of cake half way into her mouth. The chase ends with Clio trapped in a corner of the backyard, camera held high above her head as Erica tries to grab it.

"Give it here!" Erica jabs Clio in the stomach with a finger.

"How do I know you won't open it to expose the film?" Clio replies, steadfastly ignoring the continued poking, an attempt to get her to double over so the camera is in reach. She knows, of course, that Erica wouldn't do something like that, but that's not the point of this game.

"It'd serve you right for taking such a terrible photo," which is a fair point, probably, but Clio firmly believes in capturing not just the perfect, shiny moments. Candid shots feel a little more real to her, a way to hold onto experiences that Clio doesn't always connect with.

She had taken to photography like a fish to water, not because she's brilliant at it (her photos are decent enough, but she's no artist in this field) but because being behind the viewfinder had felt natural. It both connected her to the world and gave her an excuse to be disconnected; sometimes she feels more like an observer than a participator, like there's something just a little off about her compared to her friends. The camera is an extension of that.

~

"Donovan, get over here!" Melanie's voice cuts through the din of the pre-show organisation, hands on her hips as she frowns down at Clio from her spot on the stage.

Clio turns, leaving the camera in it's position at her eye and snaps a shot of Mel's expression, which only makes the scowl deepen. Clio laughs, "Is there a problem?"

"Yes, there is a problem, the amps need setting up and you're futzing around with that damn thing," There's annoyance in her tone, but fondness and amusement too. She's gotten used to the camera attached almost permanently to Clio's hand and the way it distracts her sometimes, like she's so fascinated with capturing the way people move, the way they smile and frown and shout that she forgets she has things to do.

"Sorry, boss," Clio caps the lens, hooks the strap of the camera over her shoulder and crosses over to the stage. Once she's hauled herself up, Melanie smacks her lightly over the back of the head. It's an admonishment both for being distracted, and for calling her boss, and all it gets from Clio is a grin.

An hour later, everything has been set up and Clio is perched by the bar as people file in, her camera in her hands. Some people pose for her, especially the diehard fans who come to almost every concert; they're familiar with Clio's habits by now and a few of them buy her drinks in return for promises she'll send them some of the photos she's taken over the night. Sometimes with the help of Alisha she compiles them all into a zine, adding little stories to the pictures and selling them at concerts for a pound a pop.

Mel watches the exchanges for a while before she comes up behind Clio and bumps her shoulder just as her finger presses down on the shutter button. It messes up the shot, but Mel knows Clio won't mind. Mistakes don't make her photos any less important to her.

~

A department store rarely has any good pickings these days, but Clio slips through the smashed window anyway, her heavy boots protecting her from the glass littered on the floor. Once inside and past the crunch of glass underfoot, she stops; she hasn't had any predictions this week, but that doesn't mean she can't get hurt. The empty store is silent, and there's nothing she can feel here, so that rules out any other people like her. There could be some regular humans hiding in here quietly, but if she stays alert she should be fine.

The clothes section is a mess, all the warm clothes are gone, leaving flimsy dresses and silk blouses littered on the floor like rubbish. Clio picks some of these up, folds them as small as they can go and puts them into her backpack - the thin material might not be good for keeping warm, but they make good bandages. Any and all food that was kept in the store is long gone, but that doesn't mean there isn't anything useful left.

As she walks through the store, something catches her eye and Clio ends up standing in the electronics area, looking at the cameras. She'd left her camera in London with Mel, a silent promise that she'd come back eventually, except then the sky had lit up with storms and the world fell apart. Melanie is dead; Clio knows it deep in her bones in a way that she can't ever explain. For a few minutes she stands in silence, letting her thoughts wander, but before long she lets go of the sorrow again and tells herself to keep moving. She's tempted by the cameras, but there's not much use for them so she turns and moves on.

When she's leaving the store not too long after, she ends up walking past the checkouts and spots a little display of disposable cameras - untouched by the looters - and now she can't resist, her hand snaking out to grab one and slip it into her coat pocket.

That evening, she makes her way to her house for the first time in a month and starts capturing photographs; of the damage, of the things that stayed the same, of the mound of dirt surrounded by stones that mark her mother's grave. While she's there, she retrieves a handful of the little plastic capsules designed to hold film and puts them in her bag for later.

~

It becomes a type of therapy for her, and when she ends up at the estate, Clio hides the rolls of film in the bottom of her bag and doesn't tell anyone about them for a long time. She knows they're a waste of space, but she also feels like she needs to document this in a way that's so much more important than how she used to document the people she met.

Eventually one of the kids catches her with one of the disposable cameras she's started to collect and they get so excited about seeing a camera that she can't hide it anymore. It ends up as a distraction for them. When Clio can get cameras she shares them around (sometimes they get sacrificed for other uses but the other people at the estate start to understand the importance of them), warning the kids to treat the cameras carefully and not to go overboard taking a million photos straight away. She teaches some of them how to open the cameras and extract the roll of film, giving the kids a project that kept them busy and out of their parents' hair for a few hours. It's a little thing, but it makes life after the apocalypse easier to bear.

Clio is the guarder of the film, promising to keep all their photos safe until she can find, or make, a darkroom to expose all the photos. She knows it's unlikely, the chemicals are hard to come by these days and while the cameras aren't too much of a strain on resources, she knows an entire darkroom would be. But still, she hides the film in a bag under a floorboard in the room she sleeps in and keeps helping the kids take photos.

One night, as she lies awake in her cell on Baffin Island, she wonders what happened to all those rolls of film. When she gets out of here (and she will, she knows she will), Clio vows to go back and find them. She'll make good on her promises to the kids at estate, apocalypse be damned.