‘Brother Ariel’

Donna Faulkner is a poet and writer who is led awry by her curiosity . She came to the business of writing later on in life. She has been published in Windward Review, 300 Days of Sun, Bayou Review, Havik, Takahē: Hua/ Manu, New Myths, and others.Her debut poetry collection ‘In Silver Majesty’ was published by erbacce press (UK) in 2024.

brother ariel

Because I’m a twin, 

*We are twins.

and it’s well known that twins can predict the future, I know that I, Angel, will lose Ariel at Kilchoman Bay. His blonde hair curls at the nape of his neck. So does mine. Our hair curls. Their hair curls. I just want it to be my hair. My stumpy legs, my big hands, my well-known taste for Cullen skink, milkshake, and chips, all at once, and my habit of picking my nose in front of Octonauts. Ariel needs to get his own stuff, habits, and tastes, away from me. 

Kil: Gaelic for church.

Choman: Saint.

You’re on divine turf, there, our sons—if it’s going to happen anywhere, it’s there.

If I could be just me, I’d be happy. I’m unique. If only I had the chance to appear so to everyone else, especially to Mum and Moon. Unfortunately, they delight in our similarities—despite the overwhelming parental advice that says they must celebrate our differences. I’ve seen it in books. I’m ten—I can read. I hate being a twin. It’s no fun always having a body-double, or a constant shadow. An identical-opposite. A mirror/distorted. 

Accurate.

Ariel always gets me in trouble. Plus, he’s annoying. So are his stupid fish. He loves fish. I can’t stand fish. He has a soft-toy fish (orange) that he sleeps with, hundreds of model fish (and other sea creatures), fishing games, bath fish, mechanical fish, and his favourite thing to eat is fish fingers. He’s babyish and simple, his clothes are always garish—purple, pink, turquoise and golds—ocean colours. Mum and Moon let him wear what he wants and look at him lovingly when he’s dresses as a jellyfish, for example. I dress sensibly. Like an individual. 

Ariel is right. Fish are actually very good. We are part-fish, part other things—rocks, anemones, urchins, barnacles and a hermit crab. 

I don’t know what you think—they who are reading, but we think Ariel will change his mind.

So wonderful they have so many parts, more than the average one. More like, the all.

They/them are the best of pronouns.

I prefer drawing. Especially stars and planets, anything to do with space. 

I hate how people call us they. “They are going on holiday to somewhere very special. Perhaps one of them will tell us all about it when they come back.” said Mrs Raylan at school, pointing at the two of us sat side-by-side during carpet-time before the summer break.

When I went to reply to Mrs Raylan, we started talking at the same time. 

I stopped and let Ariel carry on because he’s louder and it was too tiring to be heard over the top of him. “I think I’ll see lots of fish. And probably eat some too,” he said. The class laughed. Ariel’s thing for fish is widely known, as is colourful, fun, Ariel himself. I felt sad. I wanted to disappear into space and explore the stars, by myself—away from Ariel and his shitty sea. 

That’s funny.

Because we are actually twins: sea and space.

Sorry— that’s too grand. It’s more like our section of the sea—this little rockpool that we are together—and a corner of a galaxy called Liam, or something.

I admit that I like Scotland. Especially the island we go to because you can see the stars clearly. When I’m drawing them I feel as though I can drown out Ariel and all his fish-talk. “Come and play fishes with me. You can be the piranha or the octopus, if you like. I know you like that,” he might say. 

“Shut up. I’m drawing the Milky Way,” I reply, and then Ariel looks sad. 

“Stars are stupid. They just sit in the sky, shining for no reason. They don’t even know if anybody sees them. Not like fish. Fish know you’re there.” 

Ariel is outspoken and boisterous. Very determined. This is so not me and that’s why I get so upset when people say we’re alike. We aren’t. We look the same, I suppose—with the blonde hair and all. We are, scientifically, genetically, the same. We were one embryo—Mum and Moon’s last one—which split in half after we were put in Moon’s womb. We were once frozen, but roared to life after we were thawed. A monster of an embryo, “Our sweet chimera,” Mum calls us. 

We know how annoying barnacles can be, always getting in the way and reminding us we are more than that concept of self.

Barnacles are inseparable from the anatomy of rocks, yet, at the same time, you can see that they’re their own beings. They have their own lives. There’s something magical about that. Like the wasp and the orchid.

An assemblage, so a body.

One body which splits.

“Come on, Ariel, eat your scrambled egg. They’re yummy. From the hens on the farm next door, fresh this morning.” Mum said on the morning of the cut—as I’ve decided to call it. 

“I don’t like eggs. They’re unborn chickens. It’s like eating yellow icky chick… bits. Before they’ve become chickens.” Ariel said.

We’re undecided about eggs.

Ariel isn’t wrong, there’s certainly potential.

“They haven’t been fertilised. Stupid,” I replied. “They’re basically vegetables.”

“Be nice, Angel.” Mum said.

For someone so interested in stars, we think it might be an idea to reconsider this limited view of eggs, ovum, and so on. And vegetal bodies, for that matter. 

Moon was washing-up the dishes while Mum watched us eating breakfast. The sun was streaming through the window, which was making her hair shine as she sipped her cup of tea. She said when me and Ariel were toddlers she hardly ever had a hot cup since we were always messing about and she never got a chance to drink it before it cooled. Why would you want hot tea, anyway? You can’t drink it when it’s hot. Moon was wearing her dressing gown still—it was made of scraggy brown towelling and smelled nice—like lemon and sugar.

From our perspective, this is all correct.

Moon is never dressed, always powerful, always citrus. 

Ariel didn’t eat his scrambled eggs. He abandoned his plate on the table and ran off to play with his motor-fish. I had my eggs. 

After she finished the washing up, Moon sat on the floor and played with Mum and Ariel even though he didn’t eat his eggs. I was sitting on the sofa drawing. This time, a picture of Moon. When I showed it to her, she said, “Well done, my little Angel. We’ll get a frame for it when we get home.” Then she carried on playing with Ariel and Mum—they each had magnetic rods and were fishing in a stupid waterless cardboard pond. 

“When are we going to the bay?” I asked. “I’m bored.” 

“I want to stay here,” said Ariel. “Can we go after lunch, instead of now?”

“I don’t see why not.” Said Mum, stroking his hair, looking at him like he was her only baby. “You’re a funny fish, my mermaid.” She said. 

“But I want to go now.” I said, feeling hot and angry. 

“What’s the rush, Angel? You’re always in such a hurry.” 

“Fishy, fishy, fishy!” Shouted Ariel. 

Hi, hi, hi.

I’ve put up with this rubbish for a long time. Since the very beginning. 

Moon told me that when Ariel and I were tiny—the size of beans—we lived in separate sac things while in her tummy, although we were attached to the same placenta. Imagine that. Cables to the stomach—twisty alien things, all slimy, like tentacles. “It was lucky you each took the same amount of food from my blood because otherwise we would’ve been in serious trouble. You see, you loved each other from the very beginning.” I was the bigger twin. By 100 grams. “You needed to be stronger to take care of your little brother—that’s why we called you Angel.” 

I think I was trying to win. I didn’t like the thought of sharing Moon, or blood, or Mum, or life.

Yes, and death—my birth is your birth, my death is your death = we = us.

Don’t be scared.

You don’t understand, but you will. 

Moon said we made her tummy shake when we grew bigger in the final months of her pregnancy. “We were all one,” she said. “I miss those times. Although I also hated it. You trapped me.”

Moon is right.

To be in community is to be free, and also ready to be devastated.

It’s a closed circuit.

We set off. 

Ariel and I in the back, as always—of the tatty car we borrow when we’re here. It belongs to a friend of Mum’s brother. Moon and Mum sit in the front. Us boys shadows of those girls—aware of each other but separate. If that makes sense. 

Yes and no. 

You know that Moon doesn’t see it that way. More like they’re within and within and within, if that makes sense.

Mum and Moon will be happier with just their Angel—not at first, but eventually.

It’s a glorious day, which helps me. On the most easterly end of Kilchoman Bay, which is massive, is a maze of pools among a forest of looming rocks. It looks like a magical place. Ariel will definitely want to live there. 

I’ve brought some of his things in my backpack. His favourite soft toy fish, his game, some fishfingers—I’m sure they’ll have thawed in this warmth. Still, there’s plenty of driftwood to make a fire and he can cook them for his tea. I brought a blanket for when it’s cool at night and some crayons and paper for when he decides drawing is good. 

There’s a wind, but it’s warm. As soon as we arrive, we both dash out of the car and run across the decked path which snakes through the grassy dunes ending up at the rear of the bay. Mum and Moon shout after us not to go too far. Ariel runs ahead, his messy blonde hair a riot. Bright, starfish-red t-shirt, loud. Warning. Me, tidier, but still running, enjoying the surge of freedom. If only it were mine. 

We can feel you’re on your way—just like the two of you felt the other before your birth.

Rumblings in the waters.

“Over there—look at those cool rocks. There will be fish there, for sure.” Ariel shouts. 

“OK.” I shout back, since he wants to go exactly where I need him to go. It’s like he understood me before I said anything.

You’re getting it.

He’s faster than me, by a whisker. He skips and laughs as he goes. 

We enter the rock-forest. The sea crashes at the outer edges, but far enough away. We shan’t be cut off, or at least, I won’t be.

You already are. 

We reach a part that I think will suit Ariel as his new home. There’s a clearing of sorts, sheltered from the waves, and a magical-looking deep rock pool at the centre, fed by a sea stream. Seaweed at the edges ripples in what the sunlight reveals to be perfectly clear water. Even I’m draw to it. 

Look.

“Did you hear that?” Ariel said. 

“What? I didn’t hear anything.” I reply. 

“I didn’t ask.” Ariel said.

“Yes you did, I heard you.” I reply.

“You’re hearing things.” Ariel said. 

You both are: each other.

“Come on, now, that was you.” We say in unison. 

Hell, yeah. We knew it was still there, somewhere: twin voice.

“This is really weird.” We say, together, again. 

We know. Look, as much as we’re having fun—we want you to listen and we know that in order for you to do that, you need to look.

Down, and to your right.

We turn our heads at the same time, searching for the spot we think the voice is coming from. Together, we walk towards the rockpool. We get low, eventually sitting on the sand, our right ears to the water—I look at the back of Ariel’s head. 

There’s a rush of cool which feels like the breath of the pool, and I can’t explain it but, we hear the voice of the sea. 

Our twin, the galaxy called Liam, or something—doesn’t matter—urged us to come and talk to you.

Angel needs us.

Does that sound right?

Now, this is strange because I try my best to use my voice to say, “No,” and that, actually, I’m quite OK, thanks, and if only I could get on with my plan. 

Except, that isn’t what happens. Instead, it’s Ariel who speaks. He sits bolt-upright. He’s red-faced, his hair even more of a mess, he points at me—“How could you? I’d die out here on my own. Why do you hate me when all I do is love you? I hate you.” He shouts. He gets up, looks about him and runs.

Now you know how it feels in our heart, when a rock thinks it’s lost a barnacle—since the latter will surely die.

I call after Ariel but he can’t hear me. The sun slips behind a cloud. Everything darkens and I suddenly feel alone. He’s gone. It doesn’t feel like I thought it would. What’s worse is that behind him, the sea has closed in, leaving no route out for me, unless I swim through the waves which have become more violent. I sit down, cross-legged, by the pool. I place my fingertips in the water, and I sob. 

My nose begins to snot. “This is your fault. You told him. You upset him. I was going to do it more gently. Who are you, anyway?”

Do you realise what a gift you and your brother share, brother?

“Can you speak normally, please? I’m upset and you’re talking in riddles.”

On the contrary, you’re the one talking in riddles.

True chat has escaped you.

You’ve forgotten how lazy words like “fault,” “gentle,” and “told,” are. 

As though you didn’t learn to speak in the real language—the tongue of the bridge-dimension.

You’re lucky. No one else gets to learn. Only twins.

Double-speak.

The voices of the membrane—just whispers.

Where all the ghosts live (a heaven of sorts).

I cry more. “Honestly, I just wanted to lose him for a while.” I shout for him, feeling like half an octopus, willing himself to regrow tentacles that were cut away, and a portion of his mantel. I feel a rush in my chest and my vision narrows: I think I’m panicking. Usually Ariel would distract me with the swish of a sparkly fan-tail.

We’re losing him—come back to us.

We were kidding about the barnacle.

You’re right about the octopus—they speak like twins can.

I scream across the crashing waves, thundering like the waters of Moon’s womb. I remember, now—that has always been the soundtrack to mine and Ariel’s conversations. Sometimes it would be too loud, like now—and it’s the only thing I can hear—when all I want to do is ask for a hug or another biscuit. 

All I want now is to hear Ariel shout back, but all I get is another furious wave. 

Then I hear the rockpool asking me to place my hands inside. 

“Ouch!” A nip from a crab. 

Even within us—the community, the collective, the merfolk, or whatever you want to call us—we harm.

We love, but we rage. Sometimes at each other.

Like you, just now.

Do you expect to be forgiven?

“Yes.”

The rockpool replies with the loudest crash, which shakes the sand beneath me. The biggest rock that guards the head of the pool collapses backwards, creating a low bridge across the waves that were cutting me off. 

We didn’t all agree.

It happens.

The conflict created a quake.

Otherwise known as luck, or love.

Or was it the flapping of a butterfly’s wings?

Same, same, same.

Then I feel a shove that I’ve no hope of resisting, as though I’m being pushed along a canal by the earth’s contraction. Waves overwhelm me.

A welcome back, by the fish kingdom—or a hello from a star, whose neighbour has become a blackhole, and feels compelled to say that actually, if you get sucked in, you’ll come back out.

A cycle of birth and death.

I’m sodden, lying on the sand. I look about me and I see Mum, Moon and Ariel running towards me. “Angel, thank God,” they shout. I’m relieved for a second that I made it back. 

Ariel skids on the sand and hugs me, knocking me back. He smells of salt and home. 

“I’m sorry,” I say, squeezing him.

“Would you like to play fish?” He asks. 

“Yes, I would. With our new friends, the rockpool?” I say.

“What on earth are you saying?” Asks Mum. 

“Oh, come on, it’s obvious,” replies Moon, looking at Mum, smiling. 

Ariel and I run back towards the rockpool. Then I freeze, as I see the whole clearing, flooded.

“They’ve gone,” I say, about to cry, hanging my head. “It’s my fault—first I hurt you, then I kill them.”

“They’ll be back, somewhere else. Rockpools never die.” Ariel says. “Come on, I can hear them calling us, can’t you?”

I feel a rising sense of panic—I’m not sure I can. “I don’t think I have the ears behind my eyes, like fish do.”

“We’re mer-twins, like all-twins. One of us had to be human,” said Ariel. 

Victoria (Vic) Brooks is a queer nonbinary writer living in London, and parent to an octopod (2-year-old identical twins). Their first queer sci-fi novel, Silicone God, was published by MOIST Books in the UK (December 2023) and House of Vlad Press in the US (February 2025). They have also published various essays, short fiction, and poetry. Find their work in Archer, W0rms, SAND, Discount Guillotine, and elsewhere.