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Sometimes The Mountain Buries You is a queer novella about the monster that threatens your attempt at a much-needed quiet life. Check out the about page here.
You manage to convince Sheppard to stay around until Murre leaves and Murre to leave as soon as they can. There's an ache in your chest reminding you that you weren't supposed to find yourself in situations like these anymore. You have a nightmare about the cabin on fire.
Sheppard is too tired to avoid your gaze and retreat. Instead, he manages to collect himself enough to exude the silence you appreciate him for.
You hate how the silence emphasizes the distance between the two of you. You hate how the silence still makes you feel comfortable regardless.
Murre shaves their head for the summer. They stand at the cabin door, backpack on their shoulder with their entire life, a restocked medkit, and a fistful of fruit leather from the nearest city where they'll be picking fruit shortly.
"You could have had a ranch hand shear you."
Reflexively rubbing the short fuzz of their head, Murre laughs. Their voice is hoarse still, you reckon probably forever. "That would have been cool." But it's the ritual for them, you get that.
"I'll miss ya." Sheppard has been standing a little further from Murre than before they had tended his worst injury. He's nearly hiding behind you, but he smiles all broken teeth and sounding like a laugh. "Don't come back though."
Murre laughs and smiles in a way that promises Sheppard they won't.
Since you're not leaving Sheppard until he leaves, the librarian is driving Murre to the nearest city. Murre looks at Sheppard, then you, then out the window to the empty road, and asks you to sit on the front step with them while they wait.
Sheppard, who you've gathered has been actively avoiding Murre's thoughts—and Murre's everything—hums his assent. You watch him wearily make his way to the furthest corner of the kitchen and pretend to busy himself with the kettle.
On the front step, you wonder if Murre will overcome the mountain of guilt weighing their shoulders down in time to say anything before the librarian arrives. They look just about the worst you've ever felt. They weren't supposed to come back, they couldn't be trusted knowing too much about Sheppard, they shouldn't have accepted your offer to stay. They weren't going to come back, they had intended to never come back.
And Sheppard laid bleeding and broken in their arms regardless.
"I'm so sorry I almost got Sheppard killed."
The part of you that knew better than to bring Murre to Sheppard in the first place, the same part that was pissed when Murre reappeared in town, feels tremendously vindicated.
If it weren't for the part where Murre almost got Sheppard killed, you had grown close enough to the endearing Murre that you would have put a reassuring hand on their shoulder seeing them so anguished. Instead, you press your lips tight together and stare across the road.
When Murre pulls themself together, their breathing shifts and they fidget with the thin woven bracelet they'd tied to a zipper on their backpack, having ripped it off their wrist while tending Sheppard's worst injury. "Hey uh there's some things that came up while I was here." They're not trying to catch your eyes and you wouldn't give them any ways. "About Sheppard. And because I wasn't saying anything about him I feel like you missed out on a lot of things you would have learned if I weren't around."
You stare hard across the road at a tree that's not even in your focus.
"You should ask him."
"Okay."
This is how you find out how Sheppard knows French, that Sheppard knows every language from anyone's mind he pulls thoughts from. How the things he eats are a not-quite-naturalized part of this world and that he was brought here to remediate. How he's always listening, passively, and it takes as much conscious effort to listen intently as it does not at all.
This is how you find out he's dying.
Slowly, sure, and maybe since he began, but it's been many decades with not a lot left to go.
You regret waiting two years. Knowing now that he would never fit into your carefully crafted sense of comfort, you wish you had smiled back at him and thought of an alternative to a drink. Knowing now that however long you have left of him will be after this, and it's okay but it will hurt.
But if houses on fire taught you anything, it's that hurt things can still survive.
End.
You manage to convince Sheppard to stay around until Murre leaves and Murre to leave as soon as they can. There's an ache in your chest reminding you that you weren't supposed to find yourself in situations like these anymore. You have a nightmare about the cabin on fire.
Sheppard is too tired to avoid your gaze and retreat. Instead, he manages to collect himself enough to exude the silence you appreciate him for.
You hate how the silence emphasizes the distance between the two of you. You hate how the silence still makes you feel comfortable regardless.
Murre shaves their head for the summer. They stand at the cabin door, backpack on their shoulder with their entire life, a restocked medkit, and a fistful of fruit leather from the nearest city where they'll be picking fruit shortly.
"You could have had a ranch hand shear you."
Reflexively rubbing the short fuzz of their head, Murre laughs. Their voice is hoarse still, you reckon probably forever. "That would have been cool." But it's the ritual for them, you get that.
"I'll miss ya." Sheppard has been standing a little further from Murre than before they had tended his worst injury. He's nearly hiding behind you, but he smiles all broken teeth and sounding like a laugh. "Don't come back though."
Murre laughs and smiles in a way that promises Sheppard they won't.
Since you're not leaving Sheppard until he leaves, the librarian is driving Murre to the nearest city. Murre looks at Sheppard, then you, then out the window to the empty road, and asks you to sit on the front step with them while they wait.
Sheppard, who you've gathered has been actively avoiding Murre's thoughts—and Murre's everything—hums his assent. You watch him wearily make his way to the furthest corner of the kitchen and pretend to busy himself with the kettle.
On the front step, you wonder if Murre will overcome the mountain of guilt weighing their shoulders down in time to say anything before the librarian arrives. They look just about the worst you've ever felt. They weren't supposed to come back, they couldn't be trusted knowing too much about Sheppard, they shouldn't have accepted your offer to stay. They weren't going to come back, they had intended to never come back.
And Sheppard laid bleeding and broken in their arms regardless.
"I'm so sorry I almost got Sheppard killed."
The part of you that knew better than to bring Murre to Sheppard in the first place, the same part that was pissed when Murre reappeared in town, feels tremendously vindicated.
If it weren't for the part where Murre almost got Sheppard killed, you had grown close enough to the endearing Murre that you would have put a reassuring hand on their shoulder seeing them so anguished. Instead, you press your lips tight together and stare across the road.
When Murre pulls themself together, their breathing shifts and they fidget with the thin woven bracelet they'd tied to a zipper on their backpack, having ripped it off their wrist while tending Sheppard's worst injury. "Hey uh there's some things that came up while I was here." They're not trying to catch your eyes and you wouldn't give them any ways. "About Sheppard. And because I wasn't saying anything about him I feel like you missed out on a lot of things you would have learned if I weren't around."
You stare hard across the road at a tree that's not even in your focus.
"You should ask him."
"Okay."
This is how you find out how Sheppard knows French, that Sheppard knows every language from anyone's mind he pulls thoughts from. How the things he eats are a not-quite-naturalized part of this world and that he was brought here to remediate. How he's always listening, passively, and it takes as much conscious effort to listen intently as it does not at all.
This is how you find out he's dying.
Slowly, sure, and maybe since he began, but it's been many decades with not a lot left to go.
You regret waiting two years. Knowing now that he would never fit into your carefully crafted sense of comfort, you wish you had smiled back at him and thought of an alternative to a drink. Knowing now that however long you have left of him will be after this, and it's okay but it will hurt.
But if houses on fire taught you anything, it's that hurt things can still survive.
End.
