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okaywolfChapter 18s tend to go this way, hey?
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.
Once your insistence that you know what to do assuages their doubts enough to agree, you pick a spot away from the strip of cabins and away from your planned to be home. It's a bit much of a hike for winter, but you promise to do everything in your power to get them back to Basin's small cabin safe and sound before nightfall.
Sitting on the new—reused, from the decent town's new and used building supply store—carpet, you and Shale pick out what of hers to feed the fire. She doesn't have much but, supplemented with the things she's left and things she's touched in Basin's small cabin, there's enough. Just in case, the two of you plan spares where she has them; extra scraps of fabric worn near daily for years, a dead paint marker accompanying the mint tin of a mostly used distress kit, crumpled receipts alongside notebook pages with the impressions of what was written on the pages prior.
You're a little skeptical about the legitimacy of the wrapper buried deep in the side pocket of her backpack from when she first picked up this trouble, but she says it's the first thing she acquired and still has after her unfortunate crossing of paths.
When you look at it—but don't touch, you shouldn't touch any of these things—it feels off in some way. Whatever way it is, is probably adequate.
You hope it's adequate. You've never done this before. You just have the something else from already in your head telling you how to do it.
Basin comes with. They hold Shale's hand the whole trek. They ask you where is a safe enough distance from your destination to stop, and then stop for lunch with the meal Shale and they prepared.
You savour mustard—know both Shale and Basin's methods for making mustard—and a honey vinegar dressing. Shale, laughing as always, asks if you always eat like this. Basin snorts as they say "yeah".
Back on the trek, where the snow is shallow Shale spots a little house of sticks. "That you?"
You hum and nod, well ahead and away already from the little house, making way for the two in the snow. You've started avoiding the little houses, but you keep making them.
Shale's thinking about all the little houses she's made. Shale's thinking about what comes to live in the little houses. She knows more about what comes to live in the little houses than you do. It's good to know that little houses and what they house are a good thing. Everything you do you learn by doing, make mistakes, make wrongs, hope for the rights of trial and error. Everything except the things something else has told you, and the innate drive to consume the things that shouldn't be here.
What has latched onto Shale is a thing from the places no one lives, but not the same as a thing that shouldn't be here. You can't just eat Shale's problem. Without your help, it will continue to be a problem until it ends Shale.
Basin knows one person who ended such a way, Shale knew several.
When you arrive at the fairly level ground with a fair gap in the trees some good distance from the strip of cabins and your planned to be home, Shale does a round to check any nearby little houses are also a fair distance from where you clear the snow for her to build a fire. Basin sips hot tea from a thermos and watches you, troubled.
Basin troubling has started to trouble you. It troubling you is proof Basin should trouble. You can recognize the attachment you've grown for them; you have always recognized their aversion towards growing any attachment to you, since you first woke on their kitchen floor. Even as the distance and warmth grows from Sheppard and the other person they thought of every time they thought of Sheppard—the people you can't help but remind them of—that does not mean they have space for you nor desire such.
You didn't want Basin to come. You had told them that this ritual was sacrificing that which was meaningful, and that Basin being meaningful to Shale was a risk. Basin insisted.
You insist Basin sit further back. You tell them to keep a hand on a tree—one of the ones in you've memorized and connected by twig and needle—just in case, so you can notice the instant something's wrong.
Drawing on knowledge you already have but have never formed into words, you instruct Shale on constructing the fire, on laying out the spread of objects, on fine tuning the placement of objects until knowledge and the connection between these meaningful objects and the connection to what has latched onto Shale is satisfied. Then you wait.
Shale waits, kneeling on the uncovered ground. Basin's hand slips down the tree. You keep watch of the fire.
When its starting tinder is spent, it bursts into a fountain of unnatural flame. A ball of spindly flames reaching out in all directions.
What has latched onto Shale is far more formidable than the example already in your head. You feel Basin, luckily, fall back against the tree—this distracts you from the moment the fire becomes what has latched onto Shale. If it hadn't, you would have had time to pull Shale back.
The bugle that escapes your throat shifts into a protracted wail as fire that is not fire and is now also what has latched onto Shale lances across your torso. Across the mass you shield Shale with. Across the mass it struggles and fails to overcome in its path to harm Shale rather than let its quarry go.
You are a much more valuable quarry than Shale. And you do not have much meaningful to satisfy the requirements of the ritual.
When what has latched onto Shale and is attempting to latch onto you identifies what is meaningful to you and physically present, you do not choose to abandon Shale.
Abandoning Shale to save Basin isn't something you could possibly consider, it doesn't occur to you. Shale is important to Basin, Basin is important to you. You promised to do everything in your power get them both back to Basin's small cabin safe and sound before nightfall. Safe and sound for only one isn't safe and sound at all.
It burns. Not just the not fire. The thing that has latched onto Shale is malice unending at your intrusion on its hunt, at your resistance of its hunt of you. As you hold it in place it scars you deeper, burns at what you are—not just physical mass, not just poison and the something in your bones. It wounds and cauterizes You.
And then Shale feeds the first item to the fire. A scrap of fabric markered by a friend and once patched her jacket, eaten by flames. Markered by a friend ended by one of these.
The fire—the ritual—overtakes the one of these—what has latched onto Shale. Shale watches the fabric memory of someone she's lost incinerate, then feeds notebook pages impressed with lyrics written in the company of loved ones to the fire.
You slump away from the flames that offer no heat and now only burn the objects Shale sacrifices to it, place yourself within arm's reach of Shale and grunt when Basin detaches from the tree. They're quick to replace their hand against bark, and you do your best not to collapse from relief.
Your physical wounds steam in the snow that offers you no relief from the burn. Your entire focus is on the next steps and keeping watch, no space for idle thought or thinking through what just happened. No space to wonder if Basin had nearly rushed to your aid when they had detached from the tree until much, much later.
You tell Shale and Basin when it's time for them to close their eyes. You yourself alone watch as what has latched onto Shale loses its connection to her, receives instead the connection to what was sacrificed to the fire, then is disconnected from the fire and from here.
You can only hope it doesn't come looking for you. You cannot be vigilant at all times.
You rest in the snow until Shale collects herself from losing so much. She picks her way around you to Basin and you do not have it in you not to be in their heads.
It hurts to know how badly they feel about how this has gone, it burns.
Once they've settled you pry yourself upright and shamble back towards Basin's small cabin with the two of them in tow.
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.
Once your insistence that you know what to do assuages their doubts enough to agree, you pick a spot away from the strip of cabins and away from your planned to be home. It's a bit much of a hike for winter, but you promise to do everything in your power to get them back to Basin's small cabin safe and sound before nightfall.
Sitting on the new—reused, from the decent town's new and used building supply store—carpet, you and Shale pick out what of hers to feed the fire. She doesn't have much but, supplemented with the things she's left and things she's touched in Basin's small cabin, there's enough. Just in case, the two of you plan spares where she has them; extra scraps of fabric worn near daily for years, a dead paint marker accompanying the mint tin of a mostly used distress kit, crumpled receipts alongside notebook pages with the impressions of what was written on the pages prior.
You're a little skeptical about the legitimacy of the wrapper buried deep in the side pocket of her backpack from when she first picked up this trouble, but she says it's the first thing she acquired and still has after her unfortunate crossing of paths.
When you look at it—but don't touch, you shouldn't touch any of these things—it feels off in some way. Whatever way it is, is probably adequate.
You hope it's adequate. You've never done this before. You just have the something else from already in your head telling you how to do it.
Basin comes with. They hold Shale's hand the whole trek. They ask you where is a safe enough distance from your destination to stop, and then stop for lunch with the meal Shale and they prepared.
You savour mustard—know both Shale and Basin's methods for making mustard—and a honey vinegar dressing. Shale, laughing as always, asks if you always eat like this. Basin snorts as they say "yeah".
Back on the trek, where the snow is shallow Shale spots a little house of sticks. "That you?"
You hum and nod, well ahead and away already from the little house, making way for the two in the snow. You've started avoiding the little houses, but you keep making them.
Shale's thinking about all the little houses she's made. Shale's thinking about what comes to live in the little houses. She knows more about what comes to live in the little houses than you do. It's good to know that little houses and what they house are a good thing. Everything you do you learn by doing, make mistakes, make wrongs, hope for the rights of trial and error. Everything except the things something else has told you, and the innate drive to consume the things that shouldn't be here.
What has latched onto Shale is a thing from the places no one lives, but not the same as a thing that shouldn't be here. You can't just eat Shale's problem. Without your help, it will continue to be a problem until it ends Shale.
Basin knows one person who ended such a way, Shale knew several.
When you arrive at the fairly level ground with a fair gap in the trees some good distance from the strip of cabins and your planned to be home, Shale does a round to check any nearby little houses are also a fair distance from where you clear the snow for her to build a fire. Basin sips hot tea from a thermos and watches you, troubled.
Basin troubling has started to trouble you. It troubling you is proof Basin should trouble. You can recognize the attachment you've grown for them; you have always recognized their aversion towards growing any attachment to you, since you first woke on their kitchen floor. Even as the distance and warmth grows from Sheppard and the other person they thought of every time they thought of Sheppard—the people you can't help but remind them of—that does not mean they have space for you nor desire such.
You didn't want Basin to come. You had told them that this ritual was sacrificing that which was meaningful, and that Basin being meaningful to Shale was a risk. Basin insisted.
You insist Basin sit further back. You tell them to keep a hand on a tree—one of the ones in you've memorized and connected by twig and needle—just in case, so you can notice the instant something's wrong.
Drawing on knowledge you already have but have never formed into words, you instruct Shale on constructing the fire, on laying out the spread of objects, on fine tuning the placement of objects until knowledge and the connection between these meaningful objects and the connection to what has latched onto Shale is satisfied. Then you wait.
Shale waits, kneeling on the uncovered ground. Basin's hand slips down the tree. You keep watch of the fire.
When its starting tinder is spent, it bursts into a fountain of unnatural flame. A ball of spindly flames reaching out in all directions.
What has latched onto Shale is far more formidable than the example already in your head. You feel Basin, luckily, fall back against the tree—this distracts you from the moment the fire becomes what has latched onto Shale. If it hadn't, you would have had time to pull Shale back.
The bugle that escapes your throat shifts into a protracted wail as fire that is not fire and is now also what has latched onto Shale lances across your torso. Across the mass you shield Shale with. Across the mass it struggles and fails to overcome in its path to harm Shale rather than let its quarry go.
You are a much more valuable quarry than Shale. And you do not have much meaningful to satisfy the requirements of the ritual.
When what has latched onto Shale and is attempting to latch onto you identifies what is meaningful to you and physically present, you do not choose to abandon Shale.
Abandoning Shale to save Basin isn't something you could possibly consider, it doesn't occur to you. Shale is important to Basin, Basin is important to you. You promised to do everything in your power get them both back to Basin's small cabin safe and sound before nightfall. Safe and sound for only one isn't safe and sound at all.
It burns. Not just the not fire. The thing that has latched onto Shale is malice unending at your intrusion on its hunt, at your resistance of its hunt of you. As you hold it in place it scars you deeper, burns at what you are—not just physical mass, not just poison and the something in your bones. It wounds and cauterizes You.
And then Shale feeds the first item to the fire. A scrap of fabric markered by a friend and once patched her jacket, eaten by flames. Markered by a friend ended by one of these.
The fire—the ritual—overtakes the one of these—what has latched onto Shale. Shale watches the fabric memory of someone she's lost incinerate, then feeds notebook pages impressed with lyrics written in the company of loved ones to the fire.
You slump away from the flames that offer no heat and now only burn the objects Shale sacrifices to it, place yourself within arm's reach of Shale and grunt when Basin detaches from the tree. They're quick to replace their hand against bark, and you do your best not to collapse from relief.
Your physical wounds steam in the snow that offers you no relief from the burn. Your entire focus is on the next steps and keeping watch, no space for idle thought or thinking through what just happened. No space to wonder if Basin had nearly rushed to your aid when they had detached from the tree until much, much later.
You tell Shale and Basin when it's time for them to close their eyes. You yourself alone watch as what has latched onto Shale loses its connection to her, receives instead the connection to what was sacrificed to the fire, then is disconnected from the fire and from here.
You can only hope it doesn't come looking for you. You cannot be vigilant at all times.
You rest in the snow until Shale collects herself from losing so much. She picks her way around you to Basin and you do not have it in you not to be in their heads.
It hurts to know how badly they feel about how this has gone, it burns.
Once they've settled you pry yourself upright and shamble back towards Basin's small cabin with the two of them in tow.
