Winter is slow.
November 20th, 2024 10:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
okaywolfFinally crossing off some of the last notes I wrote for You&& back before starting. Not many left now.
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.
Winter is slow. You come to realize your slow healing has halted well before you're better by most any margin.
Shale is a great mediator for what happened with the fire. She handles your stubbornness, Basin's stubbornness, and her own hurdle of guilt to get someplace with how you all felt to an understanding and acceptance of how it had gone. It still feels bad. She tells you of course it would.
You try to keep away, to spend the remaining winter mapping viable crevices to take shelter in, but the draw of Basin's home is a comfort you've learned to crave. You start finding yourself with Juniper purring in your lap and Shale leaning over her guitar more often.
You watch Shale drink from Basin's favourite mug, leaving toast crumbs from the corners of her lips floating on the surface of tea. When she says your name, she remembers all the terns she's ever seen that made an impression on her.
You further understand how Basin is her home. How Shale is their home. How all that time Shale wasn't here, Shale was still Basin's home. Even if Shale never came back—if she had been ended by the what had latched onto her, or by some other violence, or sickness, or had to stay forever somewhere else—she would continue to be Basin's home; in their memories of each other, the way they've touched and shaped each other, the ways the world is different for them for having known each other.
You understand that knowing Basin has made the world different for you. Not just because they were the first person you ever talked to, but because that too. Because all of it, every moment, even the ones you weren't here for, even the ones you don't know about. Every time Basin turned the porch rock, restocked their peeling-veneer cabinet, knew something to say while talking to the many people they call home because they know you.
You just hope your presence won't always be pain; heart-weary and heart-ache or feeling bad about the fire for Basin. So you tell the two of them your plan to expand your home.
Like shovelling snow and bringing in wood, Shale offers to help build it. She starts bringing back whatever will fit in Basin's car when she accompanies them to the decent town. Free on roadsides and the backs of businesses; pieces of plywood, cabinets ripped out of remodelled bathrooms, an antique wooden stand with a recess for an unfortunately cracked washbasin she's determined to find a replacement for, more eclectically acquired chairs.
A wooden kitchen chair with its back snapped off from one such decent town foray is added as a stool to the cabin's porch next to the porch rock. Shale sits on it, drinking from Basin's favourite mug, waiting for Basin to come back from the job they do to support all those people Basin calls home.
This year, they finally convince each other for Shale to stay. No Spring departure. You feel the weary sink of Shale's bones in relief.
By the end of winter, a dog—hardly more than a puppy—from one of the ranches accompanies her on the porch. "Ruth," she tells you, "short for Ruthless."
She shows you how to handpoke tattoo while Ruth and Juniper snooze together on the ample-cushioned ample seating closest the stove. You fill your skin with twig and needle, tree and pinecone, feather and flower, mushroom and berry.
The tattoos do help, like Basin had said. You wish you had tried before this new constant pain.
All hurt burns now. That hurt that you felt like you needed it so that you could overwhelm and consume the things that shouldn't be here, that hurt that felt good, is burn. It's different, awful, no longer overcomes the necessary violence of consuming the things that shouldn't be here. And burns all the while. It doesn't stop or ease.
You don't know what you can do to ensure never to make such a mistake again. Not like the fire, not like becoming complacent. Even with the knowledge from something else, from Basin, from Shale who knows so much more than Basin—there's so much you don't know.
Shale's mediation had revealed as much to her and Basin, when they asked you how it could have gone so wrong, when they asked you how you even knew the ritual in the first place. Basin troubles over this.
You avoid their head when they trouble over things—you, trouble over you. So while Shale walks with Ruth in the woods ahead of you, Basin falls back to where you are prone to following Shale as a tug in your chest directs you to continue the promise of keeping her safe and sound.
"Tern."
You move a part of your focus on all-encompassing nature to Basin, keeping up all of your awareness for anything that might threaten the promise of keeping safe and sound.
"I think there's supposed to be more of you."
There's more warmth of home than ever, but the pain; heart-weary and heart-ache doesn't leave. Just like how your attachment to Basin and now Shale are accompanied by how bad the fire had gone.
"I don't think you're supposed to learn all this stuff the hard way."
You watch Shale call Ruth to her side, reward her, then send her out again.
"It feels like you're not supposed to be alone, at least not at the start."
Basin's aversion to you from the start wells up in the back of your throat. "You, feel, like that."
Basin levels a flat look at you, You do too.
You bristle because they know you heard that. This is how the ways you are stubborn come to a head with the ways Basin is stubborn. For the most part, Shale laughs at the two of you for it. Even now, in the attention you keep on her, she turns and rolls her eyes at the two of you.
"Not like, it helps, to feel like that."
Basin sighs, kicks at the dirt. Breaks connections of twig and needle.
You hold out an arm to stop them. "Can, you, not?" you call, take a breath long and slow while they study your face, and then you explain why.
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.
Winter is slow. You come to realize your slow healing has halted well before you're better by most any margin.
Shale is a great mediator for what happened with the fire. She handles your stubbornness, Basin's stubbornness, and her own hurdle of guilt to get someplace with how you all felt to an understanding and acceptance of how it had gone. It still feels bad. She tells you of course it would.
You try to keep away, to spend the remaining winter mapping viable crevices to take shelter in, but the draw of Basin's home is a comfort you've learned to crave. You start finding yourself with Juniper purring in your lap and Shale leaning over her guitar more often.
You watch Shale drink from Basin's favourite mug, leaving toast crumbs from the corners of her lips floating on the surface of tea. When she says your name, she remembers all the terns she's ever seen that made an impression on her.
You further understand how Basin is her home. How Shale is their home. How all that time Shale wasn't here, Shale was still Basin's home. Even if Shale never came back—if she had been ended by the what had latched onto her, or by some other violence, or sickness, or had to stay forever somewhere else—she would continue to be Basin's home; in their memories of each other, the way they've touched and shaped each other, the ways the world is different for them for having known each other.
You understand that knowing Basin has made the world different for you. Not just because they were the first person you ever talked to, but because that too. Because all of it, every moment, even the ones you weren't here for, even the ones you don't know about. Every time Basin turned the porch rock, restocked their peeling-veneer cabinet, knew something to say while talking to the many people they call home because they know you.
You just hope your presence won't always be pain; heart-weary and heart-ache or feeling bad about the fire for Basin. So you tell the two of them your plan to expand your home.
Like shovelling snow and bringing in wood, Shale offers to help build it. She starts bringing back whatever will fit in Basin's car when she accompanies them to the decent town. Free on roadsides and the backs of businesses; pieces of plywood, cabinets ripped out of remodelled bathrooms, an antique wooden stand with a recess for an unfortunately cracked washbasin she's determined to find a replacement for, more eclectically acquired chairs.
A wooden kitchen chair with its back snapped off from one such decent town foray is added as a stool to the cabin's porch next to the porch rock. Shale sits on it, drinking from Basin's favourite mug, waiting for Basin to come back from the job they do to support all those people Basin calls home.
This year, they finally convince each other for Shale to stay. No Spring departure. You feel the weary sink of Shale's bones in relief.
By the end of winter, a dog—hardly more than a puppy—from one of the ranches accompanies her on the porch. "Ruth," she tells you, "short for Ruthless."
She shows you how to handpoke tattoo while Ruth and Juniper snooze together on the ample-cushioned ample seating closest the stove. You fill your skin with twig and needle, tree and pinecone, feather and flower, mushroom and berry.
The tattoos do help, like Basin had said. You wish you had tried before this new constant pain.
All hurt burns now. That hurt that you felt like you needed it so that you could overwhelm and consume the things that shouldn't be here, that hurt that felt good, is burn. It's different, awful, no longer overcomes the necessary violence of consuming the things that shouldn't be here. And burns all the while. It doesn't stop or ease.
You don't know what you can do to ensure never to make such a mistake again. Not like the fire, not like becoming complacent. Even with the knowledge from something else, from Basin, from Shale who knows so much more than Basin—there's so much you don't know.
Shale's mediation had revealed as much to her and Basin, when they asked you how it could have gone so wrong, when they asked you how you even knew the ritual in the first place. Basin troubles over this.
You avoid their head when they trouble over things—you, trouble over you. So while Shale walks with Ruth in the woods ahead of you, Basin falls back to where you are prone to following Shale as a tug in your chest directs you to continue the promise of keeping her safe and sound.
"Tern."
You move a part of your focus on all-encompassing nature to Basin, keeping up all of your awareness for anything that might threaten the promise of keeping safe and sound.
"I think there's supposed to be more of you."
There's more warmth of home than ever, but the pain; heart-weary and heart-ache doesn't leave. Just like how your attachment to Basin and now Shale are accompanied by how bad the fire had gone.
"I don't think you're supposed to learn all this stuff the hard way."
You watch Shale call Ruth to her side, reward her, then send her out again.
"It feels like you're not supposed to be alone, at least not at the start."
Basin's aversion to you from the start wells up in the back of your throat. "You, feel, like that."
Basin levels a flat look at you, You do too.
You bristle because they know you heard that. This is how the ways you are stubborn come to a head with the ways Basin is stubborn. For the most part, Shale laughs at the two of you for it. Even now, in the attention you keep on her, she turns and rolls her eyes at the two of you.
"Not like, it helps, to feel like that."
Basin sighs, kicks at the dirt. Breaks connections of twig and needle.
You hold out an arm to stop them. "Can, you, not?" you call, take a breath long and slow while they study your face, and then you explain why.
