Larks and Owls

The loudspeaker on the decrepit carriage buzzes with distortion. “This train will depart in one minute.”

Dawn and Eve embrace on the platform. Dawn is in floods of tears, her head buried in Eve’s chest. Despite Eve’s distress at the imminent parting, she can’t help but notice the disapproving frowns of their fellow passengers. It’s early morning, and the larks are beginning their commute. They give the couple a wide berth. The caste differences are obvious — Dawn’s healthy glow and shabby apparel contrast sharply to Eve’s cadaverous pallor and immaculate threads.

Forty-five seconds left, Eve calculates.

She nestles her face in Dawn’s hair, smelling her clean, unperfumed scent. She inhales deeply as if she can capture a part of Dawn forever within her. Eve lifts her head, hoping to distract her thoughts from the inevitable. This proves futile.

Thirty seconds left.

Their first encounter was on a train like this one, barely a year ago. Eve had sat in the gloom of the dimly-lit carriage, gazing dully at energy-efficiency propaganda.

Shift work works! was the slogan of one poster. Eve loathed the faux jollity, the desperate — and doomed — attempt to enthuse dead-eyed commuters about the broken system they laboured under. Broken, but necessary. The transport and energy infrastructure of the Sprawl simply couldn’t handle the strain of so many concurrent users.

Another showed a group of wan looking young men and women laughing and drinking beer. Night owls have a hoot! Transfer today. The night shift paid a lot more, but it was still not enough to tempt many. The population split was fifty-five percent larks. Most owls were conscripted, or had been born into it like Eve.

The train was half-empty — it was still early for most larks. Eve was a little drunk, having gone for Friday drinks after work. She could feel the heat of the larks’ glares as she walked clumsily down the carriage in search of a seat. Eve approached an empty berth, but the man sitting next to it picked up his bag from the floor as she neared and put it beside him. Eve sighed wearily and moved on. Every free seat was taken in the same way by larks who pretended not to see her.

Until Dawn. Eve hovered hesitantly by the free seat next to Dawn, expecting the same response. But Dawn just looked up with an open and beautiful shy smile. Eve sat down. As she did so, her fingers accidentally brushed against Dawn’s warm, bare arm, and a tingle ran up Eve’s spine.

Twenty seconds left.

Eve worked late every night the next week, heading home on the train at the same time as that first night, hoping for another glimpse of Dawn. She encountered nothing but dirty looks and passive aggression. On Thursday morning she fell asleep on the train, exhausted by her long week and fruitless search. She woke at the end of the line. The edge of the Sprawl. By now it was off-peak hours for both larks and owls, so there was an hour to kill before the return train. Eve wandered the streets of what was scarcely more than a village, a quaint cat’s cradle of crooked streets and low houses of ancient stone, frozen in time. The only shops open were cafes and those selling outdoor supplies. The possibilities of the town were exhausted after half an hour, so Eve sat down outside a cafe and ordered a coffee.

A young man sat down at the table next to hers. He had a scrubby beard and dark shadows under his eyes, and wore a heavy-duty coat and a bulging rucksack, both clearly brand-new and top-of-the-line. Obviously an owl, as were most of those who chose to leave.

“Are you going today?” asked the man, gesturing with a glance towards the thick forest that represented the edge of the Sprawl. The edge of civilisation.

Eve shook her head. “Not today,” she said. The man looked disappointed. No-one returned to the Sprawl having left, so it was no wonder that most preferred to leave with a travelling partner.

The man left, and Eve was alone once more, oriented with her back to the grey Sprawl that shimmered on the horizon like a leaden mirage. She stared at the darkly verdant wilderness that loomed on all other sides. These hills had once been bare: sheep-grazed, barren and latticed by dry-stone walls, an unnatural facsimile of nature. Now they were truly returned to nature, sublime and forbidding. All except for a cleared area on the side of the hill which exposed to view a huge and ancient glyph, carved into the chalk of the hill millennia ago, and still maintained by unknown persons. Out here on the edge, perhaps lost traditions exerted almost as much gravity as the distant core of the Sprawl.

The chalk symbol was a simple one. A sun, with a crescent moon nestled tightly against its curved body. A pagan symbol of natural cycles, perhaps. Eve stared at the hill until her train was due. She slept as she travelled through the endless Sprawl, arriving back at the core just in time for her next shift.

The work night passed in a dull, tired haze, and then it was Friday morning. Eve took the train home and dozed gently. Then there she was. Dawn sat down across the carriage, and Eve jolted into alertness. For half an hour they stole glances at one another, their hearts fluttering and faces flushing when their gazes happened to briefly lock.

Eve was staring at her feet, embarrassed after one such moment, when their awkwardly coy game was interrupted by a rough hand on her shoulder.

“Move,” said the man next to her, gruffly. He pointed at a pregnant woman who had just boarded the train. “She needs your seat.”

Eve got up, half voluntarily and half pushed by the man. She squeezed by the pregnant woman, who swept past imperiously and sat down, thanking the man as she did so.

Eve seethed with bottled rage. A moment ago she had been oblivious to the rest of the carriage. Now she was acutely aware that she was the only owl in a crush of larks who were all radiating animosity.

“You could have given up your own seat,” said Dawn quietly.

The man looked incredulous. “This is our time,” he said slowly and precisely, as if talking to a child. Dawn let out an exasperated sigh and got up, pushing her way towards Eve. Over Dawn’s shoulder, Eve saw the man looking perplexed, even a little wounded.

“You did the right thing,” the pregnant woman told him. “You shouldn’t have had to say anything. She should have known. But they don’t know any better, do they?” She pursed her lips with distaste. “Not as sharp. I read that their melatonin levels are screwed up. Broken circadian rhythms. That has to have an effect on the brain, right?”

Dawn reached Eve. Their eyes met once more, and this time neither looked away.

“I’m Dawn.”

“Eve.”

They smiled and rolled their eyes. They had both been christened with the most traditional names possible for their respective castes, classic names chosen by parents who were proud of their places in the system and wished their children to embody it.

Neither Dawn nor Eve appreciated the sentiment.

Fifteen seconds left.

Love blossomed in the interstices between day and night. They swapped novels, exchanged music playlists, and shared videos and dumb memes. They laughed over in-jokes, spoke of their passions, and discussed their hopes and dreams. The one thing they did not discuss was what future they might have together. It didn’t matter at first; there was something magical about their stolen moments in the dawn and dusk. But as time went on they wanted more. More time together. More of what could not be. Eve could not ask Dawn to give up her family and friends to become an owl, nor would she wish the ill-health effects of the night shift upon her. Yet while larks remained more numerous, Eve could not legally transfer. Out of love for Dawn, Eve gave her a future.

She ended it.

Five seconds left.

And now here they are. Eve gently disentangles herself and kisses Dawn one last time. Eve steps onto the train and stands by the door. A tear rolls down her cheek.

One second left.

Dawn leaps onto the train just as the doors close. She squeezes Eve tight.

“What are you doing?” says Eve with consternation, tinged with secret delight.

“I’m coming with you,” says Dawn with a look of determination in her tear-reddened eyes. “Or rather, you’re coming with me.”

“Where to?” says Eve, confused.

“End of the line,” says Dawn. “I want to see that chalk carving on the hill you told me about. Then beyond.”

Eve says nothing for a moment. When she does speak, it’s cautiously. “You understand that no-one comes back?”

“I know,” says Dawn with a feigned nonchalance that is betrayed by her trembling hands. “Maybe they die out there. Maybe we’ll die out there. But maybe they discover something else. A different way of living. Maybe that’s why no-one comes back.”

Eve is doubtful. She thinks that if anyone does live outside the Sprawl, they live as troglodytes, without power or technology. And she further suspects that these hypothetical societies, should they discover them, will be riven by injustice in their own unique ways; it’s human nature to seek opposition and the Other.

Yet her doubts and cynicism melt away when Dawn pulls her tight and whispers with strained hope in her ear: “Say yes?”

“Yes,” says Eve softly. Somewhat to her surprise, she realises that she means it. Better to seize a free life with the one you love in the harsh light of day, than to grasp at an ordained existence in the shadows of the gloaming.