okaywolf

Thank you again for reading You&&. If you’re seeing this and wondering what You&& is, you can find out more about my queer, monster-filled novella on its about page. It’s a sequel to my other, queer, monster-filled novella Sometimes The Mountain Buries You.

One day You&& will have a proper name instead of a working title. That’s not today.

First, announcements!

• There’s a third instalment in the series already under way, it’s a short story that will be posted December 25th, 2024. It will be 18+, with gore and sexually explicit content


• There’s plans for a final, fourth instalment but, honestly, I’m a little tapped out after writing two novellas in a year and losing the place I had been posting them and the rest of my writing. For now, let’s say it’ll start releasing in 2025


• I still have plans to edit Sometimes The Mountain Buries You and You&&, to release on my website as well as in epub and pdf formats. Sometimes The Mountain Buries You’s edit got delayed by the cohost shutdown. It’s possible I’ll decide to edit and release one or both before the fourth instalment starts releasing

Now extras!

You&&, a playlist. Fifteen tracks that, honestly, I had started putting together before even finishing Sometimes The Mountain Buries You. Some of them really encapsulated what I was going for, and some of those I don’t feel I hit the mark exactly as I intended but not so far off I’d remove them from the playlist.

While writing You&& I’d listen to it on repeat and would cackle every time the first song came back around.


Listen on: [spotify] [youtube] [last.fm]

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Bingo—! Not actually tho. You&& came so close to a bingo, the grievous injury to kidneys is only implied though.


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Screenshot. Contains spoilers!

This is what You&& looks like on my computer, just like Sometimes The Mountain Buries You with the writing each chapter in its own txt file full height and then shrinking down to be a cascade for navigating between.


I have confirmed, this is indeed at least one person’s nightmare.

That’s all! I’ll be back with the third instalment on December 25th, 2024. I hope you enjoyed my rumination on home being other people.

Finally 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.

This 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.


You spend some time reflecting on Basin while you plan the expansion to your home and while you eat the things that shouldn't be here. You spend a lot of time eating the things that shouldn't be here, in a cathartic, self-destructive way. Whole days are spent lying on cedar boughs, waiting to heal from stitching yourself together while you visualize space for fire, a washbasin, ample space for tattooing and medical care.

Copying Basin's small cabin is not your plan. Is not desirable.

Instead, you work with every memory of indoors you've observed from Basin, Juniper, Basin's neighbours, and other humans who—rarely—near you in the woods. Work with them until they fit. What actually suits you, suits your body, and what you actually find comforting.

Making things feels good. It keeps away the restlessness when you don't have a thing that shouldn't be here to eat.

Harvesting and placing cedar boughs for bedding sets your mind to ease. Mapping trees with shifting twig and needle exercises the capacity of your memory. Rotating rocks flexes your senses. It all settles you, keeps you a kind of aware and calm that makes the hours of the days hold their shape and serve you in turn.

You start building little houses. Little groups of stone. Little assemblies of sticks.

They start housing something you are hesitant to touch.

You next visit Basin on a Tuesday, eager for a human meal after days tracking a particularly mobile thing that shouldn't be here left little in your digestive system. With only minor scrapes and fresh heal of mending yourself to show, Basin troubles.

They serve you the meal regardless, and sit in suspicion of your silence while you eat and peruse what they know—a fair bit—about building home-sized structures.

There's still pain; heart-weary and heart-ache in their cognizance of you. It wells up with a warmth that is growing as distance grows from when they lived in the town with Sheppard and the other person they thought of every time they thought of Sheppard, a warmth akin when they look about the cabin and their eyes land on a blanket here, a zine there, an illustration affixed to the fridge. Warmth that is a type of home you don't understand. A type of home from the people they love who are gone.

You are finishing off the meal, they are still thinking—differently than suspiciously—about you in their head. "Hey, can we have a conversation about this instead of you read my mind and come to your own conclusion?"

Startled, you call, "Yeah, sure, okay," before you can pull what they intend from their head.

Basin's expression is a tug on their eyebrows as they try to figure why you reacted such. "Look, Tern," they put their empty mug—not their favourite—in the sink and pick up Juniper from where he purrs on the eclectically acquired chair nearest you. "Most of my friends know about things like you, have had experiences with things like you."

Experiences that range in quality, you gather.

"O, kay."

"But not all of them."

You nod. On your plate, the barest smear and crumbs of the human meal waits for you. You wish Basin had waited until you were actually finished eating.

You've learned and been reminded enough times that Basin would rather not introduce you to other people. Now you learn that Basin includes most of their friends on that list.

"So how can I let you know not to come here?" They're not asking how can you let them know you need medical assistance, they're frustrated you've probably pulled as much from their head—that they are troubled with your frequent, nonessential visits. It's been months since you've last needed Basin's medical assistance, they are skeptical you will need it any time soon.

"Do you, know about, rocks?"

Basin frowns.

"Do you, know about, winds?" you try again, to a deeper frown. "Rocks, it is, then."

In the woods, you rotate rocks so that they 'face' each other. They relate even if they weren't hewn from the same larger rock, and relate better if they were. You use this to know conditions of what is growing where—how many berries how ripe, recent deadfall, proliferation of mushrooms—to know what tumultuous weather has done to a region without surveying yourself, and further track the things that shouldn't be here. They slip out facing each other though—by tremors, passing wildlife, and passing things that shouldn't be here—which pushes away the other rocks facing it.

You tell Basin to put a sizeable one, larger than their fist, on their porch. They can't move it out of place and back again with the required precision, so you tell them to turn it a half circle when you shouldn't come to their cabin—you'll compensate their imprecision with the facing rock, check every time it's out of alignment if Basin's rock is welcoming again.

They aren't familiar with these things, not personally, not this. You ask, instead of sifting and pulling their mind, even though you can now do so much without the splitting pain in your head, because Basin prefers it.

Basin knows about leaving things where they are—a smart practice. They have a handful of stories from friends who didn't. They've known a number of people—a very small number—who intentionally touch things like you and rotating rocks.

After assuring Basin that rotating a rock on their porch won't invite broader issues, you leave to feel the good of making the connection to the rock on Basin's porch. You realize, once you've found an appropriate rock for each of your approaches to Basin's small cabin to face the one on their porch, that you had forgotten the purpose of your trip.

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.


Before you left Basin's small cabin, they asked you if you were in their head so much because you're new. You didn't have an answer, you're still working on one.

In a way, Basin is more familiar with these things than you are. Basin knows so much about you because they met someone you never will. Enough that you reckon sifting and pulling their every memory of Sheppard and the other person they thought of every time they thought of Sheppard would take days. The proposition feels wrong somehow, intrusive, because of how Basin feels—pain; heart-weary and heart-ache, and a complex blend of emotions—whenever they think of Sheppard and the other person they thought of every time they thought of Sheppard.

While picking plants, shifting twig and needle, rotating rocks, and tracking the things that shouldn't be here, you instead hold close something else Basin said—something that creates a complex blend of emotions in you. Your name.

As much as something else tells you that you're dangerous, you're lethal, no small part of you recognizes the benefit Basin's company. You know how to tend your wounds, how to better move in and out of minds, what tea is, the uses of many plants, having a name, being in the company of another person.

It's enjoyable to you. You know that for Basin it's integral. The company of other people, even when they're not there, is everything to Basin. All-encompassing home.

Home.

Here, in all-encompassing nature how it should be, you think and feel, Home. Here, the birds and mice, deer and bears, are home. Here, rock and dirt, tree and brush, are home.

This is your home. It's different from what Basin calls home, from what Basin needs.

In your shelter, your eyes wander. Is this home? The things you've collected feel home maybe. The rib bone in your hand less so until you give it a place amongst the collection.

You consider expanding your shelter after the coming winter. Maybe with a space for fire. Maybe Basin knows more useful things that you would be partial to and would be partial to knowing about before making your own home.

The next time you visit Basin is a Tuesday. You knock the way they told you to. Their kitchen smells strongly of spice and herb, their dish rack is towering with large bowls and large utensils, the proximity of your arrival to what being withdrawn from Basin's mind shows recent memories of many people sharing food—withdrawn because their question is still bothering you—makes them press their lips into a flat line. You are probably glad to be withdrawn from Basin's mind, you reckon they are running through how it could go if you visited after cooking too much on Monday evenings.

When you inform them that you are not injured, their eyebrows also press into a line. "Well, since you're here, would you like leftovers, Tern?"

Your first human meal floors you. You do eat what the woods offers—you do eat the things the things that should not be here, though they are hardly sustenance—and have found, beyond survival, the enjoyment of thimbleberry sweetness, salmonberry bitterness, venison hearty, moose heartier, mushrooms complex. This is a composition of ingredients, each with individualized preparation then applied spice and herb, salt and heat. "More, this."

Basin chuckles. "Sure."

It's easier to know things after asking. After the inundation of taste and texture, you ask what this meal was and how to make it. The answer determines that you will include a space for fire in your home, and a washbasin. When you leave Basin who is still troubled by your lack of injury to tend, you leave satisfied in hunger and desire for knowledge—better results than you could have imagined on this experimental foray to Basin's small cabin, Basin's home, Basin's company.

So you come back again. Once, there are other people in Basin's small cabin and you slink back into the woods. Second, after consuming a thing that shouldn't be here with minimal injury, you flaunt the fresh heal of mending yourself.

Basin smirks, tells you good job but asks what you used to keep yourself together, troubles about your lack of injury to tend, wonders if you're capable of having an infection.

You don't think anything in the woods that is supposed to be in the woods can be rejected by or harm your body that way. All-encompassing nature how it should be is something you are a part of, it encompasses you. There is no part of the woods that doesn't nourish you.

They offer you the suture kits they used on you, offer to teach you how to sterilize the tools—requiring a space for fire. They consider but don't ask if you want to practice stitches.

Third, again lacking injury to tend, you lay on the thick dark brown carpet resembling grizzly bear pelt and play with Juniper. Basin reads a folded and stapled set of papers, Zine, and you drift in and out of their head as they read the words, interpret them, interpret their meaning, and think about the Indigenous land protector blockade detailed on the pages and their experiences on other blockades, other efforts, other protests. When their encroaching need for sleep takes notice they take note of the time, and breathe long and slow. "Why do you keep coming around?"

You pause in a waggling talon formerly waggling at Juniper. Juniper takes the opportunity to bat at the formerly waggling talon to no distraction of yours. "I like, talking, to you." You and Basin have hardly talked this evening.

You feel the pad of Basin's finger run along paper edge, feel it just about to but then not cut them as the automatic part of their brain draws on their experience handling paper. They do these things when they think in this way—pressing curling fingers on their mug, fumbling their sewing needle.

These things stand out to you, hold your nervous attention.

"I guess I am the first person you've ever talked to."

Like but not the same as their question, this bothers you. That your enjoyment of their company is somehow predicated on lack of experience, the presumption that you wouldn't enjoy it as much if you had something to compare it to. That your enjoyment, your like is somehow not real.

You bristle. You know you're bristling because Basin watches it happen.

They don't say anything.

You could sulk. You could leave. Instead, you ask, "What do you know about fire?" and do your best—poorly—to cow the bristle and sulk from your voice. Juniper bats at the formerly waggling talon as you waggle it again.

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.


You left the strip of cabins on the dusty road without turning down Basin's offer. You left without taking up their offer. You're still considering it.

Mostly you consider avoiding the need to take up Basin's offer.

By the time you leave Basin's cabin, you're so well-healed it takes no time at all to trek far from any sort of road. Here in blue-grey rock and needle-bearing tree, you feel everything around you and it puts you at ease. The cool moisture trapped between soil and canopy, the scuttle of insect bird mammal, the sounds of plant life. A constant sensorial choir that fills your lungs and presses against skin. All-encompassing nature how it should be, encompassing you.

How it should be most of the time.

There is a reason you were lying in the ditch.

Tracking the things that shouldn't be here is easy. The way they touch the ground leaves marks unlike any of the many animals you share the calls of. Plants sound different after being trodden on by them. There's a taste in the air when you're on their trail.

This one in particular tastes like ozone and the sharp impact of boulders on boulders.

You understand what hunting is. You understand bird rooting out bug, cougar stalking deer, Heather and Jared with rifle in hand picking their way through woods. This is not hunting.

This overrides any intent, purpose, consideration. Something tells you to consume with such overwhelm that you struggle to make conscious thought and decision.

The thing is roaming. They are always roaming. What other thing they could be doing is beyond you, with it in your senses you become nothing but a mouth to swallow it whole.

You know when it notices you because you're in its head. It's in yours.

You've learned from your prior encounter. You've learned—you later, regrettably, realize—from being in Basin's proximity how better to be in and out of its.

The only damage done to you is what is inevitable in your snapping strike to pluck it from its surrounding.

With its pitch-sticky limbs in your grasp, with bear snarl from your throat because you are of these woods and it is not, you rend still-living parts to swallow near-whole until it is no more.

Consuming it is sickening. That innate drive pilots you, puts flesh in the rows of your teeth, works your gullet until ozone and the sharp impact of boulders on boulders is removed from the all-encompassing nature. Until the all-encompassing nature is again how it should be.

With overwhelm satisfied, the you that has conscious thought and decisions consider your injuries—few. The you that has spent some sunsets tracking this thing now reckons the some less sunsets return—shelter. The you that remembers a cup of tea contemplates how to add fire to your shelter—comfort.

Between your sickening meal and your shelter are fireweed, hissop, pine mushroom, and more that you carefully forage, taking only some of where there is plenty. As you gather them you shift the orientation of twig and needle underfoot, drawing lines between the trees that you've spent the past year memorizing.

When you make it to the familiar crack in the rock that you shimmy through, the memorized trees remain so clear in your mind. You can feel their connections underground—root and mycelium—lines traced by the twig and needle you shifted. In the cave that is your shelter, you sort your fresh forage amongst past—bark, berry, nut. When a moose crosses the lines you drew, you can nearly see it, you can certainly feel it—an awareness dancing across your skin. When the footfall of a deer snaps a twig in a line, you feel a prickle near painful.

The inevitable damage to you from your sickening meal is not so much that you'd consider Basin's offer. Lying on cedar bough, you hold together what are probably injuries only so shallow because you had experienced being in Basin's head. You wonder what things from the woods could replicate Basin's stitching you up, how much you could replicate from your experience of being stitched and their experience stitching.

You wonder what a tea from the wildflowers you've collected would taste like.

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.


Basin helps you move to the bedroom that smells less of them. You considered declining the assistance but the splitting pain in your head increases as you consider changing location—more new things, everywhere. Hall, bedroom, bed, blanket, bedside table, lamp. Your groan turns into a bugle and Basin stands outside the door for a minute cradling their mug of tea until you call, "Yeah, sure, okay."

They tell you you're not their first. Pain; heart-weary and heart-ache.

It calms your residual anxiety about being so close to a human. About the danger that was someone stitching you back together. You know it's dangerous, it's lethal. You know you're dangerous. You're lethal.

"I've been here about as long as you."

You sip chamomile. You taste when in the plants' cycle they were picked, early in flowering. You like the taste.

"I've been a vet for a little while now but the last place I was at—" They're struggling. They're thinking of people and it hurts them to think of them.

You wait, letting the splitting pain in your head die down rather than peer through their mess of thought and emotion for the story without their halting words. There are no waterstains on the ceiling in this bedroom; a corner has been patched, under the patch and plaster it smells like squirrels.

"His name was Sheppard. He died when I figure you uh... began." They frown, you watch the steam of their tea roll against the furrows of their brow, press condensation against pores and fine short hairs.

"I'm the, new one."

"Yeah." They press their lips together again. Do you, are you though?

You breathe long and slow, like Basin had before. You feel this room, feel Basin leaning against the wall by the door, feel the rest of the cabin, the birds and insects outside, the other structures on the dusty road, the lack of the things around that you have the innate drive to place within your maw and consume.

"Anyway, that's how I knew how to safely patch you up." Basin is preparing to move along, to explain more things to you.

"I do, am."

Their whole body hesitates. There's something too familiar to them about you responding to the things they weren't saying. Pain; heart-weary and heart-ache.

"The things, in the places no one lives, the ones that shouldn't be there. I do, eat."

The grip on their mug of tea becomes precarious as their fingers curl, pressing fingernails against ceramic glaze.

You learn what a fist is. The thing Basin's hands would be if it weren't for the mug. You say nothing in the span of time it takes Basin to compose themself. You bear the splitting pain in your head digging in, to stay out of their head while they recover.

When they exhale a final shaky breath, you apologize. They mutter a quiet "fuck" and reconsider what they've been building towards. "You need to stick around until night. To avoid being seen."

Your call, "Yeah, sure, okay" is automatic. Basin is concerned about their human neighbours seeing you. You've been avoiding humans. Something tells you the things you eat are concentrated in the places no one lives; something tells you to avoid humans, to avoid that service road.

Something else tells you that you're dangerous, you're lethal. You'll hurt them.

You don't want to hurt things you don't intend to hurt.

You want to leave as soon as possible. You consider the window.

"And it's probably for the best. I don't know how long it'll take for you to heal," I'd like to know how long it'll take for you to heal, "but it's best you heal before, uh, bounding off into the woods." They tap their fingernails against their mug; their tea is finally cool enough for them to drink.

You know exactly how hot it is. You can feel it from across the room. From in their head, you sense the edge of its heat warming Basin's mouth nearer burn than body temperature.

From in their head, you sense more of what they want to say. The anxiety returns.

In a desperate attempt to calm yourself, you smell the squirrels that had been in the ceiling, you know the impulses of the insects on the branch the pine tree reaching for the bedroom window, you feel the thrum of water deep underground.

When you next look at Basin, you wonder if it's possible for them to bruise their lips by pressing them together so hard all the time.

You know they don't want you to be here. You know they're thinking of Sheppard when they say, "Look. It's better if you spend more time 'eat'ing than lying in ditches."

Your facial expression is unimpressed. You do try to avoid the service road.

"I can stitch you up. Relocate bones. Put you back together." They were pitching their offer, what they've been building towards, what they want to say.

You really look at Basin. You see pigment coating the cuticle of their hair, scarred empty holes in their skin, scarred metal-filled holes in their skin, the rise and fall of their chest from their slow measured breaths, the pinch of their face as they don't actually want you here. They don't actually want to help you. It hurts them to help you. Pain; heart-weary and heart-ache.

You remind them of things they've lost.

"I'd rather you stay in one piece, be able to do what you're here for as much as you can."

Basin is doing this for Sheppard. For the the other person they thought of every time they thought of Sheppard. For the memory of them.

It feels difficult. The mess of thought and emotion—the pain, heart-weary and heat-ache—is a rock wall with no purchase, a pit of boulders, a particularly sharp break of branch on a log. It feels like you're in a desperate scrabble of limb over rock, boulder, branch, without end.

Even when the clarity of what they feel is a duty fronts above all else, it's still from that place.

There's nothing that's quiet in their head. Everything thought is attached to a complex blend of emotions, of experience, of memory.

You pull forward Basin's memories of elk and of fields of long grasses, chamomile, and clover. You consider maybe returning, if you have to.

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.


Built for a family, Basin's small cabin had two bedrooms that barely fit beds, a bathroom that barely fit a bathtub, a living room with ample-cushioned ample seating, and a kitchen laid out to accommodate an entire six-person table with all the space around it for chairs. While at times Basin's cabin contained six people—at times it contained more—they had instead opted for a broken cafe table tossed out of the back of a long-established restaurant from the decent town, and an assortment of equally eclectically acquired chairs.

The asphalt tiles of the kitchen were black and white and mint, speckled and glittery. They were easy to maintain, easy to clean. Combined with the assortment of chairs, the asphalt tiles made the ample space of the kitchen ideal for tattooing and medical care. The nearest peeling-veneer cabinet was well-stocked for the types of injuries Basin was comfortable treating and the ones they would rather not but did.

Mostly people got scrapes and sprains. Most anything else Basin sent packing to the hospital.

What arrives in their kitchen late in the afternoon is worse than a scrape and sprain, and won't be sent packing to the hospital.

The speeding, heavily-laden old small pickup truck audibly churns the rock of the dusty road supporting the strip of cabins. Like any other sign of people coming and going, Basin makes note of the approaching vehicle, sitting on ample cushion reading trash from the secondhand bookstore.

They get up when the truck stops and open the door to Jared running at them across trimmed down dead grass.

Heather is already throwing the truck in reverse, her head out the window for instructions to pull in closer to the cabin. The step that is Jared announcing their arrival and asking if Basin can help is lost entirely; Basin is already guiding Heather's old small pickup truck with waves. They focus for the moment is on the guiding Heather's old small pickup truck until their hand closes in a braking fist, then finally they let their eyes fall again on what they can't believe they are seeing.

Heather is in such a rush she doesn't even close her truck door, but Basin is already ahead of her.

"We're going to move it inside."

"Is that— They don't look good. I stopped here because I don't think they'd make it to the hospital."

Basin can't fathom what would happen if what was in the bed of Heather's old small pickup truck made it to the hospital. "It's not as bad as it looks."

Basin is not a figure that one might presume possesses great physical strength but—short, round, soft, and sturdy—they grew up hauling feed and the animals that fed on it, and had returned to hauling animals after several years mostly hauling themself across the land. With Basin's help and particular expertise handling this particular animal, what was in the bed of Heather's old small pickup truck becomes what is in Basin's kitchen.

Heather watches as the person they hadn't thought much of manoeuvred limbs she had made little sense of with ease, pulls supplies from the peeling-veneer cabinet with a distinct certainty, and prepares with all the confidence of experience to execute a level of first aid Heather hoped she would never have to. Having only known Basin on weekends and school breaks, Heather's impression of them had mostly been the hope that Jared didn't think the piercings and tattoos were cool.

Aware that there are two people who don't know what the thing in Basin's kitchen is, Basin looks up from needle, driver, and pliers to Heather standing at the ready then Jared placed further back in the comforting space of the living room. "You don't have to stick around."

Heather frowns. Basin stills their gloved hands, holding Heather's eyes for a moment before again switching their gaze to Jared with a directional intent.

"I've got this handled." You might want to handle your own person depending on you.

Once Heather has ushered Jared out of the cabin and the truck audibly churns the rock of the dusty road winding towards her cabin hidden from the highway, Basin gets to work pulling out spines before suturing muscle together the way they had been taught to with little shock and awe.

They don't look forward to the aftermath of Heather and Jared's shock and awe.

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.


Basin moves to where none of the nearest cities are the nearest cities to the town where the preceding veterinarian and Sheppard had lived. There's a desert between here and there. Here—where the mountains are steeper and crowded together—the earth wasn't so dry nearly so much, the close hillside was blue rockface that didn't crumble in hands or underfoot, and the air tasted like cold water even in the middle of summer.

They had toured around there, but all the veterinary clinics that might hire them were in cities they didn't want to live in and didn't want to commute to. They had thought about the decision to stay near there regardless, in another town similar to where the preceding veterinarian and Sheppard had become a home, trying to scrape together a home for others in a place that reminded Basin of them.

Ultimately, it made more sense to them to put in some distance and land in the neighbouring region.

The clinic that hired Basin was in a town not entirely unlike the one they had grown up in shortly before they had left it: plenty of animal care needed; a handful of long-established restaurants; more than a handful of franchise restaurants; multiple gas stations; outdated infrastructure on the side of town furthest from the highway. Basin likes it for the treasures and trash to discover at the secondhand bookstore, the considerable quality of the hobby bakery, and the inexplicable outlet in the middle of the timber bridge on the side of town furthest from the highway where they would sit looking over the river while charging their sturdy yet busted flip-phone. It's a decent town.

As much as it wasn't like it, it was too much like the more of a city where they didn't want to be, so they found themselves a cabin to rent in what was technically a community or village. Maybe. A strip of cabins and mobile homes facing a long-closed interpretive centre and level ground packed with motorhomes, with a road winding up and away to cabins on acreages out of sight from the highway. It's a twelve minute drive from the last cabin on the strip to the clinic in the decent town. Basin falls in and out of the habit of sleeping until fifteen minutes before work for weeks at a time.

They don't hate their job. It's a nice clinic that sees a range of pets and farm animals, as Basin prefers. The assisting staff is nice enough, if a little awkward and averse about their appearance and pronouns. The primary veterinarian has much to teach them and the other subordinate veterinarian, and it's honestly a relief to Basin to work where they aren't in charge—too many essential decisions and responsibilities without the experience to handle them.

But still, when left with the repetition of driving to work, working, driving back, they lose the motivation behind their goal. An excess of sleep is the least troubling outcome. And at least the habit falls out more than in when Basin isn't alone in their cabin.

The cabin is dirt cheap to rent, in part due to the squirrels Basin evicts from the attic and the rusty tinge to the water; in part due to the fact it's been empty for years and the original owner's sister appreciated someone saving it from rot since she couldn't bear to part with it.

They put work into making it not only livable but far above the squatting standards of anyone who might come stay with them—someplace to rest and rely on without the anxiety of mice, drafts, and leaks. Both the cabin and the woodshed get their tin roofs patched. Pine needles and dead grass of the yard are removed for fire safety. The toppled post carrying electricity and a landline to cabin at the peak of the cabin's face gets reattached once Basin finds out which of their neighbours was an electrician.

The neighbours inform Basin there was barely electricity before the interpretive centre was built and now, even after the interpretive centre was closed, there's—barely—internet.

The year-round residents of this dusty road along the highway barely number a couple dozen, near doubling on long weekends and school breaks. It's a relief to have so few people to remember, to have so many to depend on if need be. Basin is showered in jams, fish, venison and moose, wood for the stove, and helping hands. In turn, Basin cooks too much on Monday evenings, runs errands in the decent town on work days, and offers their own helping hands. They also provide first aid or declare that "yes, you really do need to go to the hospital" as need be.

Basin's been residing on this dusty road for little more than a year when they are presented with a situation they know better than to send to the hospital.