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Shale comes in with the train.
November 6th, 2024 10:59 pmThis one's kinda a love letter.
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.
Shale comes in with the train. She smells like the train's acrid grease and friction'd steel hanging low in late-Autumn rain. She comes bearing news of who's moved where, of deaths, overdoses, disappearances into the woods, police violence, kids' birthdays, new bands formed, current bands broken up, old bands reunited.
She's come for the winter, like the winters before. Living with Basin while the snow would make travel more miserable than she cares to deal with these days. A solid place to land and stay, to rest and rely on, a home for travelling loved ones—for Shale. For Shale, who spends Spring through Autumn in all the places the people Basin call home live, Basin is home.
Not this cabin. Basin is home.
When Basin makes tea, Shale drinks from Basin's favourite mug.
When Basin is upset, Shale kisses the tattoos on Basin's palms, and then their forehead, and then their lips. She presses her cheek to the top of Basin's head when they hug, when they sit on the couch together, when Shale looks over Basin's shoulder.
Shale's long torso has Basin's regular shirts fit short on her and Basin's long-fitting shirts fit regular. When she plays guitar, she leans over the wide deep resonating wooden box with room to spare in the crook of her body. She reminds you of salamanders and weasels.
She laughs like she's already out of breath. Like her vocal cords are straining to make sound. She laughs a lot, a form of punctuation; periods "hahaa", commas "hah", semicolons "heh".
When she isn't laughing, she's pressing her tongue against the holes in her teeth. Pushing against sharp edge enamel.
When she kisses Basin, she presses her tongue against the holes in their teeth.
She more than helps with cooking too much on Monday evenings—planning and taking on the bulk of prep and cooking. Her skills are beyond that of the line cook and dishwasher jobs she's picked up on occasion; she's cooked for dozens in city parks and in camp villages, she knows how to skin a deer and tan its hide. Every time she turns on the kitchen tap, she thinks about cousins living with boil water advisories.
Her deft handling of cabinet doors earns frequent jabs from the cabinet door latches. She swears with each one.
She swears as much as she laughs.
Regardless of the cold she works on the cabin, sits on the porch, sits in the back corner of the yard. She shovels snow off the roof and brings the wood in; she shovels snow off the roof and brings the wood in for anyone who needs it on the strip of cabins. When she's done working up a sweat, her bra hangs on the clothesline strung in front of the wood burning stove.
She has a frenetic energy calmed by Basin, by playing guitar, by Juniper purring in her lap. It's put to use shovelling snow and bringing wood in, cleaning the cabin and tightening eclectically acquired chairs' legs, and lifting Basin's spirits after an emotionally exhausting workday of awkward and averse coworkers and decent townspeople.
When her hands skate across Basin's sides, the stretch marks truncated by surgical scars remind her of fish gills.
When she stabs ink into Basin's skin, she thinks of all the places distant in distance and time she's given Basin tattoos.
When Basin tells her about you, she holds Basin in her arms. Thinks only of Basin's troubles until after Basin's done telling her them, until Basin brings up Shale's troubles.
There are things you know from before you existed. Things told to you that were already in your head when you found yourself in the woods, fully formed and otherwise without thought or memory until elk and bird and insect first formed your body and mind. Things like being dangerous, being lethal. Things like how consuming the things that shouldn't be here requires a careful balance of being in and out of their heads. Things like collecting spruce tips and berries.
Things like the fire—the fire like shifting twig and needle, like rotating rocks, like dyeing the wind—that will solve Shale's troubles.
When you tell Basin that you already know how to mend Shale's troubles, Basin troubles.
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.
Shale comes in with the train. She smells like the train's acrid grease and friction'd steel hanging low in late-Autumn rain. She comes bearing news of who's moved where, of deaths, overdoses, disappearances into the woods, police violence, kids' birthdays, new bands formed, current bands broken up, old bands reunited.
She's come for the winter, like the winters before. Living with Basin while the snow would make travel more miserable than she cares to deal with these days. A solid place to land and stay, to rest and rely on, a home for travelling loved ones—for Shale. For Shale, who spends Spring through Autumn in all the places the people Basin call home live, Basin is home.
Not this cabin. Basin is home.
When Basin makes tea, Shale drinks from Basin's favourite mug.
When Basin is upset, Shale kisses the tattoos on Basin's palms, and then their forehead, and then their lips. She presses her cheek to the top of Basin's head when they hug, when they sit on the couch together, when Shale looks over Basin's shoulder.
Shale's long torso has Basin's regular shirts fit short on her and Basin's long-fitting shirts fit regular. When she plays guitar, she leans over the wide deep resonating wooden box with room to spare in the crook of her body. She reminds you of salamanders and weasels.
She laughs like she's already out of breath. Like her vocal cords are straining to make sound. She laughs a lot, a form of punctuation; periods "hahaa", commas "hah", semicolons "heh".
When she isn't laughing, she's pressing her tongue against the holes in her teeth. Pushing against sharp edge enamel.
When she kisses Basin, she presses her tongue against the holes in their teeth.
She more than helps with cooking too much on Monday evenings—planning and taking on the bulk of prep and cooking. Her skills are beyond that of the line cook and dishwasher jobs she's picked up on occasion; she's cooked for dozens in city parks and in camp villages, she knows how to skin a deer and tan its hide. Every time she turns on the kitchen tap, she thinks about cousins living with boil water advisories.
Her deft handling of cabinet doors earns frequent jabs from the cabinet door latches. She swears with each one.
She swears as much as she laughs.
Regardless of the cold she works on the cabin, sits on the porch, sits in the back corner of the yard. She shovels snow off the roof and brings the wood in; she shovels snow off the roof and brings the wood in for anyone who needs it on the strip of cabins. When she's done working up a sweat, her bra hangs on the clothesline strung in front of the wood burning stove.
She has a frenetic energy calmed by Basin, by playing guitar, by Juniper purring in her lap. It's put to use shovelling snow and bringing wood in, cleaning the cabin and tightening eclectically acquired chairs' legs, and lifting Basin's spirits after an emotionally exhausting workday of awkward and averse coworkers and decent townspeople.
When her hands skate across Basin's sides, the stretch marks truncated by surgical scars remind her of fish gills.
When she stabs ink into Basin's skin, she thinks of all the places distant in distance and time she's given Basin tattoos.
When Basin tells her about you, she holds Basin in her arms. Thinks only of Basin's troubles until after Basin's done telling her them, until Basin brings up Shale's troubles.
There are things you know from before you existed. Things told to you that were already in your head when you found yourself in the woods, fully formed and otherwise without thought or memory until elk and bird and insect first formed your body and mind. Things like being dangerous, being lethal. Things like how consuming the things that shouldn't be here requires a careful balance of being in and out of their heads. Things like collecting spruce tips and berries.
Things like the fire—the fire like shifting twig and needle, like rotating rocks, like dyeing the wind—that will solve Shale's troubles.
When you tell Basin that you already know how to mend Shale's troubles, Basin troubles.
