![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
okaywolfHere's the last chapter of You&&. I wrote part of this chapter back in May, well over a month before I started writing You&&... Now I really ought to go back through all the chapters and figure a proper title.
Next week is extras! And then a break before the third instalment in the series~
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.
What you planned to be a home becomes more of a home than you could have made on your lonesome. Shale camps with Ruth as soon as the weather permits, to help out. She shows you how to make, make use, manage, and respect a fire, a water supply, a space borrowed from nature as it would have been without you here. When she's done working up a sweat ensuring your home is structurally sound for years to come, she shows you simple filling meals and plays guitar.
"It's good," she says, when you express gratitude beyond what she would consider is due. "I want Ruth to be good with this sort of thing."
Because while Shale is staying, she also has plans, has other places and other people. You know how it stings for her, how it pulls forth a memory of walking bare-toed under a fruiting tree—the sting of kicking the spiky bur of a nut. It's a sharp pain where she is most tender, for her to leave Basin. Even when leaving is just a couple weeks to visit cousins and build cabins.
You fill your home with the things Shale brought from the decent town, fresh cedar boughs, the rib bone you feel you might have more to do with if there had been another one like you to teach you, and—eventually—Basin's offerings as well.
They accept that they are a part of your life in ways they'd rather not be, that they mean so much to you. It's a fact and was one before it was burned into your body.
They've accepted you will come to be a part of theirs. They're stubborn about its development, but have acknowledged inevitability. Before your home is done construction, they find a replacement washbasin for the wooden stand Shale had picked up for you. They carry it to your home, wait for you to return home, and continue to sit as they had while waiting—silent and letting the complex blend of emotions work through their body.
As with the dozens upon dozens of people they call friends and family, they use their advantageous position of a stable job in a well-enough paying profession to better equip your survival. The several several-gallon water containers and firestarter are put to great use.
When Shale is away and the porch rock isn't turned, you visit Basin's small cabin often. Juniper purrs on your lap while Basin reads zines, and treasures and trash from the secondhand bookstore. You show them new tattoos, let them know how the seasons are progressing—what plants are coming in and wilting, what waterways are surging and dwindling, what birds are arriving and departing—and mostly sit in the quiet of crackling fire.
Eventually, Basin tells you how long you'll live—well past them. It stings like kicking the spiky bur of a nut to know this. Since first waking in Basin's small cabin, you've learned to let your immediate reaction become a complex blend of emotions—that you've learned to work through your body, that you've learned to sift through like minds until you understand why it stung so much in the first place.
So it doesn't entirely surprise you when Basin explains what they're doing, what they've been doing.
The sun's starting to set earlier again. Shale's away for the last time before holing up for winter. You slip into the cabin on a Tuesday, expecting leftovers.
You find Basin on an eclectically acquired chair, writing at the formerly broken cafe table.
"What, are you, doing?"
"Ah." Basin so enveloped in thoughts you caught the surface of—both cheery and melancholy—looks over their shoulder with surprise. In their mind, they're surprised you hadn't come across this earlier. "Writing you a letter."
"A, letter." There's no mail service to the strip of cabins, nevermind your home. You can't imagine what Basin would withhold from telling you directly. You're so far from when such uncertainty would fling you into suspicion. Instead, you cross the kitchen until you're at Basin's shoulder and tilt your head not too far as to remind Basin of every owl they've seen tilt their head such.
"For you in the future," Basin says. They're thinking about when they'll be gone. They're thinking about a box of numbered envelopes in their room. "After I'm gone. So you can still talk to me."
No words can express their words hitting you. Your chest tightens, you lose track of if you were inhaling or exhaling, you feel the back of Basin's eclectically acquired chair crumple in your grip—then catch yourself. You inhale, fuck's sake, smile as you exhale, and offer to put on the kettle.
You make Basin's tea in your favourite mug.
With time, Basin and Shale will leave you. You've so many more years to go than they possibly could. When they're gone, they will continue to be your home—in your memories, in the things you know, in the things you do, in the objects they'll have left behind to you, in the home you built with them. In chamomile tea, your name, the food you make, the songs you sing, the tattoos on your skin. In mending yourself, so you can live and do what you must as long as you can—to continue a promise Basin made to themself, in the memory of others they called home.
Eventually, much later, you'll be the one to leave. You'll leave with the satisfaction that you've been home for others, and will continue to be home for those still around. You can only hope that the way you leave people—the way you've fostered home in people—leaves them happy and warm to have known you. You can only hope that the pain; heart-weary and heart-ache, does not trouble them so much that it takes time for that warmth to return.
The last little house you build remains empty until you are gone.
Next week is extras! And then a break before the third instalment in the series~
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.
What you planned to be a home becomes more of a home than you could have made on your lonesome. Shale camps with Ruth as soon as the weather permits, to help out. She shows you how to make, make use, manage, and respect a fire, a water supply, a space borrowed from nature as it would have been without you here. When she's done working up a sweat ensuring your home is structurally sound for years to come, she shows you simple filling meals and plays guitar.
"It's good," she says, when you express gratitude beyond what she would consider is due. "I want Ruth to be good with this sort of thing."
Because while Shale is staying, she also has plans, has other places and other people. You know how it stings for her, how it pulls forth a memory of walking bare-toed under a fruiting tree—the sting of kicking the spiky bur of a nut. It's a sharp pain where she is most tender, for her to leave Basin. Even when leaving is just a couple weeks to visit cousins and build cabins.
You fill your home with the things Shale brought from the decent town, fresh cedar boughs, the rib bone you feel you might have more to do with if there had been another one like you to teach you, and—eventually—Basin's offerings as well.
They accept that they are a part of your life in ways they'd rather not be, that they mean so much to you. It's a fact and was one before it was burned into your body.
They've accepted you will come to be a part of theirs. They're stubborn about its development, but have acknowledged inevitability. Before your home is done construction, they find a replacement washbasin for the wooden stand Shale had picked up for you. They carry it to your home, wait for you to return home, and continue to sit as they had while waiting—silent and letting the complex blend of emotions work through their body.
As with the dozens upon dozens of people they call friends and family, they use their advantageous position of a stable job in a well-enough paying profession to better equip your survival. The several several-gallon water containers and firestarter are put to great use.
When Shale is away and the porch rock isn't turned, you visit Basin's small cabin often. Juniper purrs on your lap while Basin reads zines, and treasures and trash from the secondhand bookstore. You show them new tattoos, let them know how the seasons are progressing—what plants are coming in and wilting, what waterways are surging and dwindling, what birds are arriving and departing—and mostly sit in the quiet of crackling fire.
Eventually, Basin tells you how long you'll live—well past them. It stings like kicking the spiky bur of a nut to know this. Since first waking in Basin's small cabin, you've learned to let your immediate reaction become a complex blend of emotions—that you've learned to work through your body, that you've learned to sift through like minds until you understand why it stung so much in the first place.
So it doesn't entirely surprise you when Basin explains what they're doing, what they've been doing.
The sun's starting to set earlier again. Shale's away for the last time before holing up for winter. You slip into the cabin on a Tuesday, expecting leftovers.
You find Basin on an eclectically acquired chair, writing at the formerly broken cafe table.
"What, are you, doing?"
"Ah." Basin so enveloped in thoughts you caught the surface of—both cheery and melancholy—looks over their shoulder with surprise. In their mind, they're surprised you hadn't come across this earlier. "Writing you a letter."
"A, letter." There's no mail service to the strip of cabins, nevermind your home. You can't imagine what Basin would withhold from telling you directly. You're so far from when such uncertainty would fling you into suspicion. Instead, you cross the kitchen until you're at Basin's shoulder and tilt your head not too far as to remind Basin of every owl they've seen tilt their head such.
"For you in the future," Basin says. They're thinking about when they'll be gone. They're thinking about a box of numbered envelopes in their room. "After I'm gone. So you can still talk to me."
No words can express their words hitting you. Your chest tightens, you lose track of if you were inhaling or exhaling, you feel the back of Basin's eclectically acquired chair crumple in your grip—then catch yourself. You inhale, fuck's sake, smile as you exhale, and offer to put on the kettle.
You make Basin's tea in your favourite mug.
With time, Basin and Shale will leave you. You've so many more years to go than they possibly could. When they're gone, they will continue to be your home—in your memories, in the things you know, in the things you do, in the objects they'll have left behind to you, in the home you built with them. In chamomile tea, your name, the food you make, the songs you sing, the tattoos on your skin. In mending yourself, so you can live and do what you must as long as you can—to continue a promise Basin made to themself, in the memory of others they called home.
Eventually, much later, you'll be the one to leave. You'll leave with the satisfaction that you've been home for others, and will continue to be home for those still around. You can only hope that the way you leave people—the way you've fostered home in people—leaves them happy and warm to have known you. You can only hope that the pain; heart-weary and heart-ache, does not trouble them so much that it takes time for that warmth to return.
The last little house you build remains empty until you are gone.
End.
