The porch rock works quite well.
October 30th, 2024 11:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
okaywolfContent warning: This chapter includes descriptions of gore and surgery.
You&& (working title) is a queer novella about when home is other people, including the monsters lurking in the woods. Check out the about page here. You&& is a sequel to Sometimes The Mountain Buries You.
The porch rock works quite well. Every time you go to visit Basin’s small cabin, the facing rocks are ajar—you consider telling Basin they don’t need to turn the porch rock for cooking too much on Monday evenings, you’re already well aware—and when you rotate a facing rock you can find a connection even with Basin's imprecise turns, provided the porch rock isn't turned away. The porch rock is turned away half of the time.
It is nice to know that Basin who needs their people has their people with them so frequently. It is nice to think that Basin is having a good time, that Basin has had good times. You think you are maybe starting to understand how Basin feels the way you know they feel about their people and the good times spent with them.
Between time spent in Basin's head, now thousands of connections you've made shifting twig and needle, entire landscapes of rotated rocks, and all the things that shouldn't be here that you have eaten, you have grown a level of expertise tracking and consuming the things that shouldn't be here. You have grown comfortable in your level of expertise tracking and consuming the things that shouldn't be here.
It's not that you are distracted. You're not thinking about the turn of the season, snapping connections of twig and needle, all-encompassing nature how it should be. You are simply out of its head a little more than it is in yours at the wrong moment. You were complacent.
It's good that you do not bleed. You would not have survived. Much like your response to pain, the fact that you do not bleed seems designed for the purpose of the relentless extermination of the things that shouldn't be here.
Overcoming your error through the innate drive to consume, your success is a gruesome lesson in the pitfall of overconfidence. At least this time you didn't fall into a pit and break apart your ribcage.
The trek to the strip of cabins on the dusty road is lengthy with inoperable limbs. Given flail and drag—prickling your own skin with many snapped twig and needle connections—you figure you've not healed 'too much' along the way.
Relief floods you when your approach's rock successfully faces the porch rock. If it hadn't, and you were to stop and lie here to heal, other things that shouldn't be here might happen upon you—they had previously when you've lied out in the open. And there aren't any viable crevices to hide away in nearby.
The remaining distance to Basin's small cabin is spent planning a spread of viable crevices to hid away in in the future. A project for the winter, before your spring home expansion.
When you arrive at Basin's home for others, your knock on the side door is not the labour of knuckle, wrist, stifle, hock, or elbow. With the control you've practiced on the lengthy trek, you manage to knock on the side door how Basin instructed you to by way of shoulder.
Considering they were asleep, it doesn't take long for Basin to emerge in their flannel pajamas and split open band tee. In that time, stationary, you drifted towards unconscious. Their cursing snaps you awake.
Their opening of the side door slams the arm you'd used to knock on the side door to the floor.
You shudder in pleasure at the pain as they assess you.
Basin says they'll be right back but you can't fully interpret spoken word. You know the words because they clearly think them before saying them. You know they're thinking the worst of this situation. You know they're leaving to change into scrubs they can later destroy.
You know they're grateful you don't bleed because getting you across the thick dark brown carpet resembling grizzly bear pelt is a laborious dragging process. Later, they'll realize you might have shed spines into the near bicentennial celebrating carpet and they'll consider retiring it.
Right now they sit on an eclectically acquired chair, head down on the wrists of their gloved hands as they take a moment to mentally prepare.
Part of this offer, to keep you in one piece, is to keep you in the best possible condition. Part of the aches and pains that have you considering tattoos are the aches and pains of injuries healed prior to Basin's offer, by way of lying out in the open or hiding in a crevice. You heal by yourself, though worse for wear. You would heal from this without them. You fight through a bawl, to assure them whatever they do will be better than nothing.
"You should understand I shouldn't know how to do this, not like this." The other person they thought of every time they thought of Sheppard had taught them. "It's going to be..."
Basin who is thinking in medical terms has become familiar to you, it's a logic and knowledge-based protocol-driven structure that you appreciate—it is easier to be in Basin's too many thoughts when their too many thoughts have rigid structure. Here now it is mired in uncertainties and second-guessing themself.
"It will be, better than, lying in a ditch," you reassure them.
They look at limp and torn limbs, some extremities still a part of you solely by few ribbons of muscle and skin, some you lost on the trek. A particularly gruesome ankle is placed late on the order of operations. Once Basin has ordered all the operations, they get to work sewing tendons and muscle—careful of your poisonous fascia and picking out spines. You learn as they go as they learn by doing, gaining expertise as they figure out which recommended suture patterns have enough mechanical advantage for your body and the state it's in—and then gain expertise sewing them again and again.
Once they've reassembled an arm they take a break to drink water and tea, and eat something with high salt content and something with high sugar content. It's enough time for your reassembled arm to be able assist them with your bones they don't want to touch.
It's daylight when Basin has completed their order of operations, exhausting their supplies and everything they could learn by doing. They are exhausted beyond measure. You wish you could do anything about it, but lying on the floor is the most you can manage.
They call in to call the day off work, cry from exhaustion in the shower, spend the better part of an hour napping with Jupiter in their room, and return to floor you're lying on to wash not their favourite mug.
Having just spent hours in Basin's head to best assist and accommodate hours of surgery, you're currently distant from their most active and clear thoughts for your own sake. You get the sense that this is what they had offered you, they know that, they're accepting that anew. They're adjusting expectations, steeling themself for the future they've dedicated themself to mending you.
They're adjusting the future they've planned and were living, to accommodate the future they've dedicated themself to.
"Let me tell you about Shale."
You&& (working title) is a queer novella about when home is other people, including the monsters lurking in the woods. Check out the about page here. You&& is a sequel to Sometimes The Mountain Buries You.
The porch rock works quite well. Every time you go to visit Basin’s small cabin, the facing rocks are ajar—you consider telling Basin they don’t need to turn the porch rock for cooking too much on Monday evenings, you’re already well aware—and when you rotate a facing rock you can find a connection even with Basin's imprecise turns, provided the porch rock isn't turned away. The porch rock is turned away half of the time.
It is nice to know that Basin who needs their people has their people with them so frequently. It is nice to think that Basin is having a good time, that Basin has had good times. You think you are maybe starting to understand how Basin feels the way you know they feel about their people and the good times spent with them.
Between time spent in Basin's head, now thousands of connections you've made shifting twig and needle, entire landscapes of rotated rocks, and all the things that shouldn't be here that you have eaten, you have grown a level of expertise tracking and consuming the things that shouldn't be here. You have grown comfortable in your level of expertise tracking and consuming the things that shouldn't be here.
It's not that you are distracted. You're not thinking about the turn of the season, snapping connections of twig and needle, all-encompassing nature how it should be. You are simply out of its head a little more than it is in yours at the wrong moment. You were complacent.
It's good that you do not bleed. You would not have survived. Much like your response to pain, the fact that you do not bleed seems designed for the purpose of the relentless extermination of the things that shouldn't be here.
Overcoming your error through the innate drive to consume, your success is a gruesome lesson in the pitfall of overconfidence. At least this time you didn't fall into a pit and break apart your ribcage.
The trek to the strip of cabins on the dusty road is lengthy with inoperable limbs. Given flail and drag—prickling your own skin with many snapped twig and needle connections—you figure you've not healed 'too much' along the way.
Relief floods you when your approach's rock successfully faces the porch rock. If it hadn't, and you were to stop and lie here to heal, other things that shouldn't be here might happen upon you—they had previously when you've lied out in the open. And there aren't any viable crevices to hide away in nearby.
The remaining distance to Basin's small cabin is spent planning a spread of viable crevices to hid away in in the future. A project for the winter, before your spring home expansion.
When you arrive at Basin's home for others, your knock on the side door is not the labour of knuckle, wrist, stifle, hock, or elbow. With the control you've practiced on the lengthy trek, you manage to knock on the side door how Basin instructed you to by way of shoulder.
Considering they were asleep, it doesn't take long for Basin to emerge in their flannel pajamas and split open band tee. In that time, stationary, you drifted towards unconscious. Their cursing snaps you awake.
Their opening of the side door slams the arm you'd used to knock on the side door to the floor.
You shudder in pleasure at the pain as they assess you.
Basin says they'll be right back but you can't fully interpret spoken word. You know the words because they clearly think them before saying them. You know they're thinking the worst of this situation. You know they're leaving to change into scrubs they can later destroy.
You know they're grateful you don't bleed because getting you across the thick dark brown carpet resembling grizzly bear pelt is a laborious dragging process. Later, they'll realize you might have shed spines into the near bicentennial celebrating carpet and they'll consider retiring it.
Right now they sit on an eclectically acquired chair, head down on the wrists of their gloved hands as they take a moment to mentally prepare.
Part of this offer, to keep you in one piece, is to keep you in the best possible condition. Part of the aches and pains that have you considering tattoos are the aches and pains of injuries healed prior to Basin's offer, by way of lying out in the open or hiding in a crevice. You heal by yourself, though worse for wear. You would heal from this without them. You fight through a bawl, to assure them whatever they do will be better than nothing.
"You should understand I shouldn't know how to do this, not like this." The other person they thought of every time they thought of Sheppard had taught them. "It's going to be..."
Basin who is thinking in medical terms has become familiar to you, it's a logic and knowledge-based protocol-driven structure that you appreciate—it is easier to be in Basin's too many thoughts when their too many thoughts have rigid structure. Here now it is mired in uncertainties and second-guessing themself.
"It will be, better than, lying in a ditch," you reassure them.
They look at limp and torn limbs, some extremities still a part of you solely by few ribbons of muscle and skin, some you lost on the trek. A particularly gruesome ankle is placed late on the order of operations. Once Basin has ordered all the operations, they get to work sewing tendons and muscle—careful of your poisonous fascia and picking out spines. You learn as they go as they learn by doing, gaining expertise as they figure out which recommended suture patterns have enough mechanical advantage for your body and the state it's in—and then gain expertise sewing them again and again.
Once they've reassembled an arm they take a break to drink water and tea, and eat something with high salt content and something with high sugar content. It's enough time for your reassembled arm to be able assist them with your bones they don't want to touch.
It's daylight when Basin has completed their order of operations, exhausting their supplies and everything they could learn by doing. They are exhausted beyond measure. You wish you could do anything about it, but lying on the floor is the most you can manage.
They call in to call the day off work, cry from exhaustion in the shower, spend the better part of an hour napping with Jupiter in their room, and return to floor you're lying on to wash not their favourite mug.
Having just spent hours in Basin's head to best assist and accommodate hours of surgery, you're currently distant from their most active and clear thoughts for your own sake. You get the sense that this is what they had offered you, they know that, they're accepting that anew. They're adjusting expectations, steeling themself for the future they've dedicated themself to mending you.
They're adjusting the future they've planned and were living, to accommodate the future they've dedicated themself to.
"Let me tell you about Shale."
