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There is - was, because no one ever talked about their home in the present tense - a statue standing in the main square of Tauron City. Marble pedestal and a larger than life figure, bronze long turned green. A little girl, thin arms raised in front of her in a pleading gesture, that type of uninspired ugly realism you often see on monuments. Some wealthy humanitarian from Caprica decided to clean his consciousness by sending some money, and that metal eyesore was an unfortunate part of the deal. After all, are you really helping the poor and downtrodden if there is no statue with your name on it?
It had never become a symbol it strived to be, but soon, it became something else. In the middle of the night, kids on the verge of no longer being kids, often with tattoos still fresh on their arms and shots of home made courage in their stomachs came to scale the monument and leave an offering in its hands. A box of fast food, usually, but some were drunk enough for something much more vulgar. Every year, a couple of kids broke their arms falling, and a couple of angry articles, calling for better protection for the poor bronze girl, was written, but that was about it.
Helo remembered a different memorial from when he was a child, one where his grandparents took him on holidays. Small garden, just a few blocks away from the square and the statue, long rows of turnips and beans and a couple of trees with dark, scarred bark, and remains of a wall in a shape of a house. On one of them, someone painted a picture in a style of the old temple art - an old woman frowning at an unseen enemy, rifle hanging on her back, and in her palms, a seedling in a handful of soil. Demeter of Tauron, they've called her, and left her offerings of seeds. Helo's grandparents usually let him run around, picking an occasional strawberry or pea pod when they were in a season, while they prayed, and then, on their way home, they told him stories. About those who ran away and those who stayed, eating dirt when there was nothing else left. About hiding underneath your bed while heavy-booted feet walked around you. About the first Cylons, when they were just clever machines fighting on both sides. About Demeter, standing in her garden when the soldiers came to burn it down so they could starve the city into submission.
About hunger so great it swallows your whole world, about weakness and pain, and about living through it day by day until you finally come up on the other side.
Galactica was as cold and silent as the Tauron City during the war - not calm, but waiting with a bated breath. He got up. The room swayed before his eyes, and he had to lean on his bed so as not to fall over. He couldn't remember the last time he ate. None of them did. His shift was starting in an hour, and while his body was crying for more sleep, there was something else to do. He walked past the memorial wall, through the hangars, and down into the long forgotten storerooms they'd converted into shrines, hand clenched in his pocket around a small satchel. Three little apple seeds, shriveled and old, saved and traded. An offering for Demeter.