#2014-1

[shenrojo-blog]

[hazelscribbles]

2014-1: Cast Bones

Sayer rose from the chair, convinced she could go back and lay down against the soft expanse of white sheets and celebrate the oblivion which had washed out the space between her ears and filled it with an aching emptiness. She stood and felt the ocean ebb and flow against her skin, felt the horizon shift faintly, and recognized that she was fainting only when Hazel looped an arm around her waist and murmured, "Let me help."

They made it up the stairs despite a height difference which should have been a severe handicap. Hazel must be much stronger than she looked, all curves and soft skin and dark hair. Sayer was practically draped across those small shoulders by the time they reached the landing.

"C-chair?" Hazel asked, but she was already lowering Sayer into the rocking chair and stepping back. "How are you feeling?"

Sayer went to answer. Her eyes drifted past Hazel to the wide expanse of ocean and sky beyond, and there her eyes stayed until she felt a cool press of glass against her lips. She drank because Hazel told her to drink.

Time stretched and thinned, pulled at the seams and gave way. Hazel lowered the glass of water. "Sayer, how are you feeling?"

Sayer tried to focus, but she was thinking of long steel lines and the smell of smoke. "Better," she whispered. The voice which came out might have been hers, or her mothers, or some faceless woman who lit up outside dark bars. "Better," she whispered, but it was as much a question as an answer.

"I've patched up your broken ribs," Hazel offered, lowering herself to sit against the window sill where the breeze could just tousle her hair. "And you had some pretty nasty third degree burns on your hands and on your back."

Sayer frowned. She looked down at her hands, turned them up to face the light. The skin felt stretched tight over her bones like a new drum, like a toy placed in the hands of a child. "I look fine," Sayer said, but the words felt coarse.

Hazel laughed. "You look like death warmed over. When Lane and Cana brought you in I thought we were going to take you over the 'Rim."

"Thanks," Sayer rattled.

Hazel glanced over, her eyes an unsettling shade of sea glass green. "D-don't thank me. I'm not convinced it was the right thing to do, healing you."

"Then why did you do it?" Sayer asked, but she had another question laying against the bottom of her tongue, a question that tasted of wind through the pine, of a place nowhere near the ocean.

"I did it," Hazel said, and it was clear she was trying very hard to conquer the consonants and not stammer. "Because Cana told me to do it."

Sayer leaned her head back against the cool wood of the chair and tried to piece together what felt like a dream. There, on the wet grass of Arlington. There, standing in New Mexico and holding a red bundle of string. There, on the steps of the Lincoln memorial holding bok choy. There, somewhere, a face without a name. "How long until the memories come back?"

"H-hours," Hazel said. She turned her wrists up when she shrugged, turned her skin so the words of dead poets and authors caught the light. "You'll have to hope the K-kamikazes don't find you before then."