ᴋᴀᴛᴇ ᴍᴀʀsʜ (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
castitas) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
singillatim2024-10-20 06:33 pm
castitas) wrote in singillatim2024-10-20 06:33 pm
Entry tags:
closed | my body is a sacred note
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."
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."
no subject
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."