closed | my body is a sacred note

[castitas]

Who: Kate Marsh + John Irving.
What: Babysitting the duckling while she recovers from September...
When: Mid-October.
Where: 41 Mackenzie Street.

Content Warnings: mentions of injuries + blood; themes of illness; likely to be religious themes throughout.

At times, there is little difference between sleep and unconsciousness. Simply, there is waking and not: a pained, feverish consciousness and some quiet, dark and deep. She flits between the two most days, but as the weeks pass the moments of awakening are a little longer — hazy and muted to keep the pain at bay. Not a mark on her, but she can feel each injury — and there's little part of her that doesn't feel injured, wounded. She took the bullet from a man's torso; the cracked skull of a boy around her own age; the mottled bruised mess of Ruby's side—

her hands, covered in his blood. Edward Little dying on the couch, and how she begged God for Him to let her keep him. How if He had sent her an angel, He couldn't possibly take him back, now.

At her center, pain and ruin. Like she's been split in two. And something else, too. Something deeper, some strange sense — her world feels smaller, somehow. Shorter.

(She's okay with it, she feels. Enola's words echo in her mind: Never again.)

But Kate's as comfortable as she can be: her bed is warm and soft, and Merry provides extra heat when he curls up alongside her. She drifts off to somewhere quiet and peaceful and dreams of a beach, littered with the carcasses of whales. When waking returns to her, there's tears in her eyes and she's not entirely sure why. She shifts a little, burrowing as her head lifts. It's exhausting to be awake, but she feels the steadiest she's felt yet. She just needs time, she remembers. Time to get better, time to heal up — however long that might take.

(She did too much. Maybe Sheriff Wolf was right.)

She's not alone, she realises belatedly. A soft and steady voice reading words that don't quite sink in yet, but there's comfort in the rhythm of it. Something familiar. Merry lifts his head and wiggles closer, his tail offering a cautious, hopeful wag. Kate swallows, takes several long moment to recollect herself.

It's John Irving who sits at her bedside. She doesn't know how long he's been there. But there's something soft and faint, some ghost of a smile at her lips.

"... Were you reading Jonah and the Whale?" she asks softly. "I... was dreaming of them. Whales."

Comments

[extramuralise]

Kate slips between sleeping and wakefulness often and easily, the dreamy fluidity convalescents are most known for sometimes carrying her away if she so much as briefly rests her eyes while blinking. Irving is, of course, no doctor, nor can he remain stationed by her bedside at all hours of the day or night, so he's taken to simply reading to her aloud whensoever he is there regardless of whether or not she seems to be awake and conscious, as he's learned by now that it's rarely so self-evident how much of it she's truly been hearing.

Still, he persists, his voice maintaining a low and steady monotone that is perhaps almost soothing at times for its soft, patient consistency— aiming not to outright penetrate her consciousness but to instead merely envelope it as warmly as Kate herself is swaddled in bed, a voice drifting in and out of darkness to assure her that she's not alone.

He blinks, gaze shifting off the page to regard Kate's face.

"Whales...?"

He smiles faintly, confusion pricking his eyebrows upward. Surely better to have dreamed of whales than dream of bears, he supposes.

"Well, I hadn't exactly planned on it, but I'm happy to read to you from Jonah and the Whale if that's what you'd like to hear."

Funny how she should choose that particular story, about which Irving has his own complicated memories. He flips a few pages in search of it.

"You know, my late Commander once mentioned how the Bible never writes that Jonah truly was swallowed by a whale," he murmurs conversationally, eyes taking a cast that is both wistful and faintly melancholy. "A 'great fish,' is what it says... a great monster called Leviathan, created for no other purpose than to swallow Jonah one day."

[castitas]

"No—" she frowns, pausing to wipe at her face. It's super sweet of him. Of course, she's heard the story plenty of times before. It's a lesson. One about saying sorry, important for any child to learn. She and her sisters heard it several times when they were little. It's a good story, and a good lesson.

But Kate hesitates, looks up at him for a moment before her gaze lowers. There's a tiny shake of her head.

"It wasn't a good dream. The.. the whales were on the beach."

Where they shouldn't be. A mass stranding. Kate's thoughtful, but then her smile touches the corners of her mouth. Not a whale. A great fish. Maybe they didn't have the word 'whale' just yet. New words get invented all the time, why not whale? But then the other word gives her pause, and she frowns a little.

"... I— I wonder if maybe the Darkwalker is a Leviathan. Created to swallow the world."

She wonders what it means if the whales were dead. Maybe being swallowed by a great fish would be far kinder than being swallowed by the Darkwalker. She remembers how Constable Fraser wouldn't let her near the body after La'an Noonien-Singh had been killed. Some... some things are just too terrible to be seen. She understands that much.

"Do you... think that makes all of us Jonah?"

[extramuralise]

A good story and good lesson both, indeed... one of sacrifice and remorse, and how no one can ever truly escape the inevitable. To fear not God's wrath, for it is just, and will lead all those who renounce their sin onward to salvation.

(Hickey might have benefited from being read this story, in fact, although Irving very much doubts that he'd be able to see the moral for what it is; it's men like Hickey who could stand to be taught the fear of God for themselves.)

Irving also hesitates, his brows drawing together as his face forms a pensive, troubled frown. He closes the book slowly, though keeps the page marked with a single finger.

"Likely only whalers returning home from a particularly strong harvest," he ventures, although the mental image is still a disturbing one. Precious though whale oil might be, mankind simply isn't meant to see so many slain giants together all at once.

Again, he's forced to hesitate, teeth pressing uncomfortably into his lower lip. The Darkwalker... a subject he still fears to even speak of.

"Do you think that Jonah deserved being cast into the sea and left to God's mercy for what he'd done?" First to defy God's will by running off to sea, then endangering an entire shipful of innocent men by bringing down God's wrath upon them as well as himself. "Were the sailors just or were they cruel by refusing to harbor him at their own further peril?"

Irving glances aside, staring off in quiet contemplation at nothing in particular.

"If he be among us now," he says finally. "Then perhaps we're all merely the sailors caught within storms which should otherwise be meant for him alone."

[castitas]

Likely only whalers returning home from a particularly strong harvest. Part of her wants to believe that, but she can't mistake what she'd seen. Whatever it was didn't... seem natural. Didn't seem like whalers. And she's... pretty sure whaling's illegal now. She doesn't argue against it, but her expression is solemn as she worries her hands.

"If he wasn't punished for what he'd done, how would he have learned to say sorry?" she offers after a long moment. "How would he have learned of God's deliverance?"

Although she doesn't know in this case how they're supposed to say sorry. She's been asking for forgiveness for so long now, asking for all the awful things to stop but... they just keep happening.

"They were scared." she murmurs. "The sailors. I guess I can't be mad at them for throwing Jonah overboard."

Whether it was just or not is... well, she's not sure if it's for her to decide. Only He can judge a man's actions, really. Kate bites her lower lip, now it makes her wonder— Enola was the one to give Kate her abilities. She's used them, she saved Lieutenant Little.

Was she just in her actions, by saving him? Or did she stop what should have been, at cost to herself? Did she do something wrong? Taking from herself? Even if it felt like the right choice to make? And if Lieutenant Little knew what she'd done— Kate swallows thickly. It's not fair, if they're not supposed to be caught up in this mess and yet they're the ones having to deal with it.

"... It's not fair." she sounds petulant as she says it, tired and pained as she is. "None of this is fair."

[extramuralise]

It's still an entirely legal, thriving industry as far as Irving knows, anyway, one which society as he knows it actively depends on, but he himself has never had much of a taste for that sort of work; a man who couldn't even cut it as a sheep farmer would never make it as a whaler, besides, but so long as others are fit enough and willing to do the job, that suits him just fine.

He nods once, solemnly.

"God punishes us so that we'll learn, yes," he agrees softly, hands folded over the book in his lap. "Hard lessons they may be, indeed, sometimes, but ultimately no crueler than when a parent must discipline his child for much the same reason."

Maybe that's true enough in theory, but in practice...? Well, never mind that; this conversation isn't about parenting any more than it's about questioning God's judgement, anyway. It always seems so much simpler in the Bible, where retribution can come directly to you as definitively as lightning from a clear blue sky, rather than in life, wherein God works in far more mysterious and subtle ways to the point of near-inscrutability.

"Jonah didn't belong there, his very presence casting blight upon what should have been safe passage for those sailors," he goes on, taking a deep breath before releasing it in a sigh. "And would have been, if not for Jonah. Therefore, whether or not they knew it, they were enacting God's will by giving him to the sea."

Which does sound a bit cruel, admittedly, but again, Irving isn't here to question God's own judgement of justice when it is He who determined right from wrong to begin with.

"It... may not always seem fair, no," he adds at length, worrying his lower lip beneath his teeth. "But sometimes God's will isn't meant to be clear to us. Sometimes goodness must be its own reward, and wickedness... made an example of, through everyone."

The Flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, 40 years in the desert... plague, ruin, and sorrow abound for both the just and the wretched alike, Biblically speaking. Not in equal measures, perhaps, but even good men must strengthen their faith through trials, hardship, and suffering— after 3 years trapped and starving to death slowly in the Arctic, Irving could never question that much even if he wanted to.

He puts a hand gently, briefly, over hers, before hastily withdrawing it again.

"But you are no Jonah, Miss Marsh. Of that much, I can be certain."

[castitas]

It's funny, but like... in a way that's not funny at all. The Forest Talkers, even the Darkwalker. They talk about them, the Interlopers, like they're the problem. Like world's all wrong because Interlopers are here. That they're— stopping things. That the world's supposed to end, but— she doesn't know.

Interlopers don't belong here, that's why they're called Interlopers.

None of them asked to be here, none of them know how they really ended up here. But they're here, and they don't know how to get home. And maybe this is Hell, or Purgatory, or— she remembers from her conversations with Heartman, the grave. Some kind of... Beach. Shared.

Her throat feels tight. She misses Heartman so much. She keeps the photograph of him with his family on her desk. He told her to burn it when she was ready— and she told Goodsir that she didn't think she'd ever be ready.

"God works in mysterious ways." she utters it softly. And even if there's fondness there, there's sadness too. "Even when it's not always so easy or straight-forward."

The last year has been anything but. But there's been good here. There's been light amongst the dark. And she smiles, despite the pain and tiredness — she appreciates the touch, it's comforting.

"It's really sweet of you to believe that." Maybe she's not, maybe she is. Maybe they all are. Maybe they'll never know. Or maybe, in time, they'll understand. But either way, it's still very sweet of him that he thinks that of her.

And it makes her wonder—

"I'm... not really sure what I am. I don't know. I've felt— different, lately." She's cautious when she speaks. "Just... ever since the Forest Talker attack."