An herb-woman moves into a little house, and finds it might not be as vacant as it had seemed. What’s it like to live with someone who has neither a form you can see nor a voice you can hear? f/?. 1854 words.
cw: mild non-sexual dubious consent (specifically for chaste touching that can’t be anticipated)
“Will you stay?” she asked to the darkened room, “I mean, will you come to bed?” She was being courageous, she thought, and she couldn’t mess this up. Not this. She adjusted the pillows again and budged over, just enough to make it clear where they could go, if they wanted. If they wanted as much as she wanted.
It had been only about half a year now since Jane had moved into the empty little house and had set about making it comfortable for herself. She’d fixed the drafty front door and replaced the crumbling kitchen sink right away, and then slowly brightened the place with paint on the walls and polish on the floors and flowers in the window boxes. There was a loft built in, almost certainly to be used as a bedroom, but she was never completely comfortable up there at the top of the sturdy ladder. That was fine. It was a small house, but there was enough room for her bed to stay on the ground with her writing desk and tiny kitchen table and big cushioned chair by the wood-burning stove.
A week into making her home here, Jane was out behind the house, clearing out what looked to be an old, makeshift garden bed. It was hard to tell what it had been used for, as it was so overgrown with weeds, so she decided to build a separate one for her herbs.
She was debating how many of the long weeds to dig up and how many to keep, because really the leaves and blossoms were quite pretty to look at, but she didn’t want them to creep too far and take over, as weeds are wont to do. She was just thinking she could put a few wildflowers in with the weeds, something the bees would like, when she felt it.
It felt like… curiosity? She knew very well the sensation of being watched. But it wasn’t coming from the path, or the trees, or down on the road below. Was it coming from the house? That couldn’t be right. Jane would know if a stranger was in her house, she’d made sure of that. But it was coming from the house, the feeling, the curious gaze.
The first time she found something on the kitchen table, one of the pretty weed blossoms, she frowned. But she tried to quickly shake it off, because she had been ever so tired when she came in at dusk the evening before, so worn out from her duties in town — maybe she had picked it on her way in? But… why would she go all the way around to the back of the house before coming in, and how did she forget doing it? She looked around to the front door, to her spring coat hanging on the hook and her muddy boots neatly placed underneath, to her chest of vials and jars, to the dishes she had washed and set to dry last night, to the book resting on the arm of her chair, everything where she’d left it. No sign of an intruder. There was nothing for it, so she shrugged and put the weed in some water and put it back on the table. The only thing tall enough she had was a glass bottle, and it looked nice enough, but she still made a note to look for something nicer in town.
Three days later, it was a small stone. It was lovely, a dark rust color and all jagged edges — perhaps from the garden? — so she set it in a tiny dish, a charming thing she’d gotten from the town potter.
It was a flower the third time, one from the window boxes. It was too short for her new vase, but it looked nice in a teacup. As she carried it over to her desk, where she’d be writing letters for most of the day, she mused aloud, “I haven’t left anything out for them, but maybe some nice brownies have come to stay?” She had only been joking, but there was a loud thud from the loft, like one of her small storage trunks had been pushed over, and she thought better of it. So. Probably not brownies, then.
Every few days or so, she’d find on her kitchen table a weed blossom or stone or leaf or fern frond or flower, something from outside, something from in the back garden, but not beyond. After the fourth time, she started saying a quiet thank you to the… the room. After the sixth time, she started blushing.
-
Sometime after the wildflowers started blooming in the old garden bed, and her herbs started thriving in the new one, she introduced herself to the air inside the house. “I don’t know if you know, if I’ve said, but I’m called Jane.” She felt a bit silly after she said it, but it seemed important.
She could feel the curious gaze on her from time to time, she could feel that she was being looked at by something or someone, and she felt it especially when she spoke aloud or hummed to herself as she worked. She didn’t know what to call it, but at some point she started thinking of it as the Presence, and thinking of the Presence as them.
Occasionally, a spoon would clatter in the drying rack, or the papers on her desk would shuffle just slightly, or a couple of glass vials would clink against each other, or a candle flame would gutter and blink and then grow tall and then gutter again. Once (but only once), an herb bundle she had hung to dry came untied, and the stems scattered on the floor. It was always something small, a slight push of something physical. She didn’t know what that was about, if they were testing the objects they could move, or if they were trying to get her attention. Either way, she gave it. “Good morning,” she’d say to what she hoped was their general direction, or, “I’m going to town tomorrow and won’t be back till late,” or, “Hmm, have you seen my shears? I put them right here,” and eventually, “Hello, dear.” She hoped it wasn’t too forward.
The soft touches came on so gradually that Jane wasn’t sure what she was feeling at first. More often than not, the touch was to one of her arms. The back of her hand or her shoulder would tingle with a soft warmth, an effervescent heat that would make her skin flush and her breath shudder. One time it was the top of her knee while she read in her chair, another time it was the side of her face while she pulled on her boots.
She wasn’t entirely sure what the Presence was, a poltergeist? a spirit? a ghost? She tried not to think too much about it. Instead, she said thank you for the gifts she found, and she grew her herbs and made her mixtures, and she kept the house and garden in good shape, and she sighed and blushed and tried not to want too much when she could feel them near her.
-
And now, six months on, a half a year since she made this little house into a home for herself, she gathered her courage. It had been a strange day.
This morning she had awoken to the wonderful tingling warmth on a spot on her temple and spanning across her ribs, like she was being embraced and chastely kissed. She’d choked out a sob, a little panicked and very unsure, and ran out of the house in only her boots and coat over her nightclothes. She’d fled around the house to the back path, and the whole time she could feel them at her elbow, then her hand, her jaw, her shoulder, and then not at all as she tripped through the back gate. She’d tried to say something through her tears, so they would understand that she wasn’t frightened of them, she was just surprised, that she needed a moment to get her head back on, but all that had come out of her mouth was something like, “I, I, oh please, I—” But it hadn’t felt like they were near her anymore, it felt like they were gone, and she wept wretchedly as she took the wooded path.
So she’d walked and cried and cried and walked. And she’d found herself at a place where she knew the main path forked off into a kind of loop, so she’d turned to go the long way home. Along the way, she’d found a few stones, some pretty fallen leaves, and some last bits of late summer color boldly showing off before the cold really set in. She had picked some and stuffed them in her pockets, careful to leave plenty besides.
She’d taken her time walking, and it was afternoon when she had trudged back through the gate, face dry and achy, pockets filled with small treasures.
It had felt silent and cold in the house, empty in a way it hadn’t been in so long. But Jane had talked aloud anyway, hoping they’d listen. “I brought you some things from the woods, things you can’t find around the house, see?” She’d placed all the stones in a row, and the leaves in a dish, and anything with a tall stem into the vase. She’d taken a deep breath, then braced herself. “I’m sorry about this morning. Would you please come back? I just get overwhelmed, and I feel… I’m not sure what you feel. But you’ve been very kind to me, I think, and I like when you bring things in for me, and when you touch me, and—”
There had been a creaky sound in the loft, like someone trying to be quiet but not quite able to pull it off, and Jane had let her mouth curl up with relief. “Will you come down?” she’d asked gently. “I promise we’re okay.”
And now, at the end of this day out in the woods, after she stoked the fire and made something hot to eat, after she bathed and bundled herself up in soft blankets, after she read a chapter or two, and had watched a flower in the vase turn and a leaf rustle in the dish, she got into bed.
Jane moved the pillows, shifted herself to one side, and valiantly asked the Presence if they would join her. It would be okay if they didn’t, it would really be fine. But she wanted them to, so much, because it felt significant if they would accept her clear invitation.
They didn’t. Or, at least, not right away.
But when Jane woke in the morning, she felt sparks of warmth all the way down her side, and all the way across her ribs. She smiled and hummed, and she stretched out her arms and legs. They both lay there for a minute in the drowsy half-light. Voice gravelly with sleep, Jane said, “Good morning, dear.”
~~~
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lol this is so late! It’s the first one I started working on when I began thinking about participating in Monstrous May a little over month ago, and it’s seen several drafts since then. I knew what I wanted to do, and I’m not certain I got all the way there, and I like it very much anyway, but good lord did it ever take TIME.
A note on the mild dub-con cw:
Even though the one being touched welcomes the touch, and imo the one doing the touching is as soft and benevolent as they know how to be, it’s that the consent is still not entirely informed. It’s very tricky, I think, because Jane really likes what’s happening, and she feels a bit like she’s being courted — the attention, the humble gifts, the odd attempts at communication, the touches unlike anything she’s felt before — and she does develop some kind of feelings for the Presence, but the fact remains that she’s missing SO MUCH information.
Aaaaaanyway. I hope you enjoyed! Please do let me know what you think, if you are so inclined <3
