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Applying your experience and what you learned from Basin’s thoughts before leaving them...
Content warning: This chapter contains descriptions of gore and injury.
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.
Applying your experience and what you learned from Basin’s thoughts before leaving them, you get by most of a year mending yourself before considering their offer again. It's a year spent learning more ways to connect and affect the all-encompassing nature. It's a year spent learning more effective and efficient ways to eradicate the things that shouldn't be here. It's a year spent observing their developments.
You consider Basin's offer not for the limb that you pull out of your torso to consume last, but the fall from the cliff where you shielded the thing's landing. The first thing you learned, when the hunger overtook you, was that killing them is not desirable. They have to be alive when you eat them. The consequence is what you're pretty sure is a rib meeting fresh air and several more similarly broken.
The trek to the strip of cabins on the dusty road is lengthy with rough terrain. By your count with impeccable precision, it is the better part of an hour before you reach the decision to pull the perforating bone rather than trek with its impaling intrusion shifting constantly through muscle and fascia, and jabbing with your every move. A bugle-emitting yank excises the offending former body part. In your hands something seeps from the bone, staining the ground with a darkness that is spreading and is not at all like the bones you've observed of the animals in these woods.
The empty rib bone that was you, you don't think will go back in. It lost something that had been a part of you, and feels inert now in your hands—even if Basin could put it back in. Once you start the trek again, you place it at the base of a memorized tree, to collect on your return.
When you left Basin's, you split the difference between the highway and the winding road hidden from the highway to avoid being seen. Now your lengthy with rough terrain route cuts across the winding road. You spend the wait for the sun to set sensing a pair of human bodies you recognize and the bed of a vehicle that smells like you.
In the light leaking from windows of neighbouring cabins and the full moon, you pile your mass into something large and bundled together against an exterior corner of the cabin. The walls groan but hold you while you brace yourself.
Inside, Basin is the sole human inhabitant of Basin's cabin. Without someone to talk to, their thoughts are many as they prepare for the evening, prepare for bed, prepare for work tomorrow. The splitting pain doesn't return to your head. Having taken what you learned from being in Basin's head to hone being in the things that wouldn't be here's heads, you feel skilled in return at being in human heads.
You drop from piled in the corner to slink around to not the door facing the dusty road but the door located for the convenience of fetching firewood from the woodshed. You find it unlocked, remember the tapping sound Basin made on the door, and raise talons with a false start, erring on the side of caution and then experimenting until contact with the windowed door replicates Basin's prior tapping.
Side door who— "Fucking hell!"
The Basin who opens the windowed door is a rattled kind of alarmed.
"You scared the shit out of me, get in." You make a note to attempt different approaches in the future, until making your presence known doesn't scare the shit out of them.
The floor of the kitchen is where you woke up. You promptly skitter across the thick dark brown carpet resembling grizzly bear pelt and lay on the asphalt tile ready for surgery.
"The fuck happened to you?" Basin is already pulling supplies from the peering-veneer cabinet after making sure to lock and curtain the windowed door.
Basin's rush of thoughts are still many but there's a driving purpose to the frenetic chaos as they run through assessing your physical state. You delay your reply while you learn the systematized assessment they've long since memorized and many times put to practice. "Cliff, bones broken and dislocated, stabbed."
"Broken and dislocated, fun," Basin curses. They place gloved hands on your torso and think through the process of assessing your injuries with a clarity of focus about what they're feeling and your reactions that have you curious about what else they know. "Just the two open wounds?"
Basin pressing against your shattered ribcage sends a shudder of pleasure up the interlocking vertebrae of your spine. "Yeah, sure, okay," you gape as all the air leaves your lungs.
Inhale, fuck's sake.
The suspension and tension of trying to enforce stillness keeps you from sucking in air until you're no longer trembling from holding it all back. You notice when you do finally inhale that Basin had been holding their own breath.
"We'll handle the dislocations first, then work on sewing you up." Basin has a running mental checklist of bones to relocate that end with asking you for any they've not accounted for. "Anything else internal you'll have to heal unassisted, I'm not cutting you open."
You wonder about and learn that they will go through great lengths to avoid cutting you open.
"I hope you didn't heal too much around your dislocations." Basin's not sure they're strong enough to relocate bones into sockets with muscle and tendon in the way.
You wonder about and learn how to relocate joints, their textbook descriptions, and every time Basin's observed and aided a dislocation in many animals including several different humans. "I can, assist."
"You bet your ass you're going to assist."
With you pulling information out of Basin's head until the splitting pain in yours returns, your assistance makes quick work of relocating your dislocations. Basin is already finishing stitching up the hole you pulled your rib out of when the non-human inhabitant of Basin's cabin emerges on soft, cautious footfalls.
The things in the woods that should be there don't mind you so much. You are only predator and prey to the things that shouldn't be here, but the tooth and claw of animals that resemble the things that shouldn't be here still make you itch. You hear the footfalls transition to asphalt tile with gentle 'clack clack clack clack' of those claws. "What, is, here?"
Basin blinks, working through the words they heard, interpreting them, interpreting their meaning, then looks up. Their surprise is laced with fear akin to you tapping on the windowed door, and then defensive caution. "This is my cat." They cut suture thread and hurry through safely setting down tools and removing gloves, watching Juniper continue his approach. "Do I have to worry about you eating my cat?"
"Do you, not want me to, eat your cat?"
Pressing their lips into a flat line, Basin sighs deep out of their nose. "Please don't eat my cat."
"I won't, eat your cat." You consciously relax muscle and nerve—which helps with the splitting pain in your head—while the small black and white creature sniffs at a limb you consciously keep still. Rather than anew the splitting pain in your head, you ask, "When did, you get, a cat?"
Basin waits for Juniper to finish his initial survey of you before they scoop him up, causing a cacophony of purrs that fade after he's placed on an eclectically acquired chair. "Spring," they wash, dry, and glove their hands again. "Juniper's a barn cat from one of the ranches— well, less barn, more kitten."
From Basin's head you know the layout of the valley. From high on mountaintops you already knew the layout of the valley. Carved by a river, a highway runs from well past the strip of cabins to well past the decent town. A tributary makes a fork in the valley, just past the strip of cabins, where the less vertical walls of the mountainside make for better grazing.
From Basin's head you know that Basin spends calving season driving to work in the opposite direction of the decent town, spending whole work days at ranches.
It's easier to know things after asking. To not have to wonder, wander through the entirety of mind to pull information as it avails to you. If Basin's verbal answers are insufficient, their nearest thoughts are satisfactory.
Settling on the chair, Juniper blinks and purrs at you.
"Next time," you interrupt Basin examining the hole you pulled a limb out of, "how should I, knock?"
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.
Applying your experience and what you learned from Basin’s thoughts before leaving them, you get by most of a year mending yourself before considering their offer again. It's a year spent learning more ways to connect and affect the all-encompassing nature. It's a year spent learning more effective and efficient ways to eradicate the things that shouldn't be here. It's a year spent observing their developments.
You consider Basin's offer not for the limb that you pull out of your torso to consume last, but the fall from the cliff where you shielded the thing's landing. The first thing you learned, when the hunger overtook you, was that killing them is not desirable. They have to be alive when you eat them. The consequence is what you're pretty sure is a rib meeting fresh air and several more similarly broken.
The trek to the strip of cabins on the dusty road is lengthy with rough terrain. By your count with impeccable precision, it is the better part of an hour before you reach the decision to pull the perforating bone rather than trek with its impaling intrusion shifting constantly through muscle and fascia, and jabbing with your every move. A bugle-emitting yank excises the offending former body part. In your hands something seeps from the bone, staining the ground with a darkness that is spreading and is not at all like the bones you've observed of the animals in these woods.
The empty rib bone that was you, you don't think will go back in. It lost something that had been a part of you, and feels inert now in your hands—even if Basin could put it back in. Once you start the trek again, you place it at the base of a memorized tree, to collect on your return.
When you left Basin's, you split the difference between the highway and the winding road hidden from the highway to avoid being seen. Now your lengthy with rough terrain route cuts across the winding road. You spend the wait for the sun to set sensing a pair of human bodies you recognize and the bed of a vehicle that smells like you.
In the light leaking from windows of neighbouring cabins and the full moon, you pile your mass into something large and bundled together against an exterior corner of the cabin. The walls groan but hold you while you brace yourself.
Inside, Basin is the sole human inhabitant of Basin's cabin. Without someone to talk to, their thoughts are many as they prepare for the evening, prepare for bed, prepare for work tomorrow. The splitting pain doesn't return to your head. Having taken what you learned from being in Basin's head to hone being in the things that wouldn't be here's heads, you feel skilled in return at being in human heads.
You drop from piled in the corner to slink around to not the door facing the dusty road but the door located for the convenience of fetching firewood from the woodshed. You find it unlocked, remember the tapping sound Basin made on the door, and raise talons with a false start, erring on the side of caution and then experimenting until contact with the windowed door replicates Basin's prior tapping.
Side door who— "Fucking hell!"
The Basin who opens the windowed door is a rattled kind of alarmed.
"You scared the shit out of me, get in." You make a note to attempt different approaches in the future, until making your presence known doesn't scare the shit out of them.
The floor of the kitchen is where you woke up. You promptly skitter across the thick dark brown carpet resembling grizzly bear pelt and lay on the asphalt tile ready for surgery.
"The fuck happened to you?" Basin is already pulling supplies from the peering-veneer cabinet after making sure to lock and curtain the windowed door.
Basin's rush of thoughts are still many but there's a driving purpose to the frenetic chaos as they run through assessing your physical state. You delay your reply while you learn the systematized assessment they've long since memorized and many times put to practice. "Cliff, bones broken and dislocated, stabbed."
"Broken and dislocated, fun," Basin curses. They place gloved hands on your torso and think through the process of assessing your injuries with a clarity of focus about what they're feeling and your reactions that have you curious about what else they know. "Just the two open wounds?"
Basin pressing against your shattered ribcage sends a shudder of pleasure up the interlocking vertebrae of your spine. "Yeah, sure, okay," you gape as all the air leaves your lungs.
Inhale, fuck's sake.
The suspension and tension of trying to enforce stillness keeps you from sucking in air until you're no longer trembling from holding it all back. You notice when you do finally inhale that Basin had been holding their own breath.
"We'll handle the dislocations first, then work on sewing you up." Basin has a running mental checklist of bones to relocate that end with asking you for any they've not accounted for. "Anything else internal you'll have to heal unassisted, I'm not cutting you open."
You wonder about and learn that they will go through great lengths to avoid cutting you open.
"I hope you didn't heal too much around your dislocations." Basin's not sure they're strong enough to relocate bones into sockets with muscle and tendon in the way.
You wonder about and learn how to relocate joints, their textbook descriptions, and every time Basin's observed and aided a dislocation in many animals including several different humans. "I can, assist."
"You bet your ass you're going to assist."
With you pulling information out of Basin's head until the splitting pain in yours returns, your assistance makes quick work of relocating your dislocations. Basin is already finishing stitching up the hole you pulled your rib out of when the non-human inhabitant of Basin's cabin emerges on soft, cautious footfalls.
The things in the woods that should be there don't mind you so much. You are only predator and prey to the things that shouldn't be here, but the tooth and claw of animals that resemble the things that shouldn't be here still make you itch. You hear the footfalls transition to asphalt tile with gentle 'clack clack clack clack' of those claws. "What, is, here?"
Basin blinks, working through the words they heard, interpreting them, interpreting their meaning, then looks up. Their surprise is laced with fear akin to you tapping on the windowed door, and then defensive caution. "This is my cat." They cut suture thread and hurry through safely setting down tools and removing gloves, watching Juniper continue his approach. "Do I have to worry about you eating my cat?"
"Do you, not want me to, eat your cat?"
Pressing their lips into a flat line, Basin sighs deep out of their nose. "Please don't eat my cat."
"I won't, eat your cat." You consciously relax muscle and nerve—which helps with the splitting pain in your head—while the small black and white creature sniffs at a limb you consciously keep still. Rather than anew the splitting pain in your head, you ask, "When did, you get, a cat?"
Basin waits for Juniper to finish his initial survey of you before they scoop him up, causing a cacophony of purrs that fade after he's placed on an eclectically acquired chair. "Spring," they wash, dry, and glove their hands again. "Juniper's a barn cat from one of the ranches— well, less barn, more kitten."
From Basin's head you know the layout of the valley. From high on mountaintops you already knew the layout of the valley. Carved by a river, a highway runs from well past the strip of cabins to well past the decent town. A tributary makes a fork in the valley, just past the strip of cabins, where the less vertical walls of the mountainside make for better grazing.
From Basin's head you know that Basin spends calving season driving to work in the opposite direction of the decent town, spending whole work days at ranches.
It's easier to know things after asking. To not have to wonder, wander through the entirety of mind to pull information as it avails to you. If Basin's verbal answers are insufficient, their nearest thoughts are satisfactory.
Settling on the chair, Juniper blinks and purrs at you.
"Next time," you interrupt Basin examining the hole you pulled a limb out of, "how should I, knock?"