prompt from @flashfictionfridayofficial !!
word count : 997.
context : +/- 2 hours post zombie outbreak, stopping for a break.
content warning : n/a.
“So what do you believe in, Calla?”
We are in the woods again. Another break was inevitable; we have a lot of county to cover, and even with trading the baby back and forth, my arms are aching. I can’t imagine how tired Sienna must be - of weaker countenance and weaker strength - but I can almost see it from the shape of Sienna’s body where she leans against a tree, legs outstretched so tightly that the back of her knees nearly touch the ground. The baby sits in front of her, fisting handfuls of grass with a gleeful grin, and for a moment we were allowed to be still. Quiet. But now Sienna has broken the silence.
“God, Gods, Goddesses? Reincarnation, science, Adam and Eve, the tree of life?”
(continued below cut)
Every item added to the list only scrambles my brain further, but she keeps right on going. And when she’s done, when she’s quiet again, she is looking to me for an answer. I don’t have one.
“Is there ever an end to your questions?” I ask instead, because it is easier and because I’d much rather listen to her talk than the other way around. There is something to be said about the way a smile twists on Sienna’s face. We are close now, only a few feet between us, and I have little excuse to look away when we’re having a conversation, but I want to in as much as I don’t think that I can.
“Of course not. We are made of curiosity at our basest point. You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to, but I will warn you that I have a thousand more questions in waiting.”
That startles a laugh out of me, bubbling up my throat and into the air without a second of forethought; I look around, but there is nothing’s attention to garner. We are safe still.
“Why am I not surprised by that?” Her endless questions would get her in trouble back in school. There is no shock in the revelation that she never managed to grow out of it. “I… don’t know what I believe in, to tell you the truth. I’ve never been religious, but I like to believe that there’s some sort of meaning to our existence. Now though…” Now, with the dead chasing us down, with someone else’s child our responsibility, with Sienna at my side… “Now, I’m not so sure.”
“You don’t have to be sure. But what if you did? What would you pick?”
“Reincarnation, I suppose. Makes the most sense. And you have opinions on that, I hear?”
I expect her to launch right into it, because she always did as kids. She does not.
“Aw, not the tree of life?”
She raps her knuckles against the tree she is leaning against, eyebrow arched.
“Sure. The tree of life too. What’s the harm?”
We drift into silence, and I look around at the scene we’ve found ourselves in. Alone in the middle of the woods, and only halfway certain on the direction that we’re meant to be heading. In the front of my mind, I’m picturing finding another road at last, finding people, safety, making a police report or two. In the back of my mind, I’m wondering if it will actually go the way I want.
“I don’t just believe in reincarnation, you know.” She is quiet, and she is not looking at me. The baby is content babbling to himself, but she is no longer engaging with him; her gaze is on the dirt between her legs, and with one hand she draws fuzzy shapes. I can hear what she is feeling in her voice, but that does not give me the tools to fix it. “I know it is true, with all of me. I remember.”
“I know.” This belief had not won her friends when we were children. The moment that she had someone alone she would regale them with tales of seaside adventures, having a child of her own, learning how to bake bread with someone who died long before she was born. I always thought the stories were interesting, but that was more than I was willing to admit; I was not willing to lose friends the way that she was. “I believe you, as much as I can.”
Silence again, but it is not a painful one, just contemplative. Sienna is not looking at me, but I am looking at her - the gentle curve of her jawline, how her hair has tangled during our travels, the way she absently taps her fingers against her bare leg, attracting the baby’s attention whether she’s meaning to or not. She looks up, and catches me staring. “Do you want to hear about them?”
There is a warmth to my cheeks that I cannot deny, caught out without an explanation to give. She does not ask for one, and I like that about her.
“...Just one. Like a bedtime story.”
She does not say it is not bedtime. She does not say we have to get moving again soon. She does not say I couldn’t possibly pick just one. Instead she smiles, she nods, and she begins.
“Well. I think the year was 1802, for my origin point in this story…”
From there she weaves a tale of being a child in Illinois, the responsibilities at her feet, the way that the household was run, the streets that she would take to get to church. She talks about moving to a town called Madison in its early years, and it is a place that I’ve never heard of, so she could be lying to me. I don’t think she is, inexplicably; the details are rich, the look on her face dreamy and faraway. When the story cuts off short, the girl in it only twenty-five years old, I do not comment.
And when we get back on the move, I am content - its own, quiet, achievement.
taglist : n/a. ask to be added if you’re interested!
general taglist : @thatonedreamer.
project; calla lilies.
status; 1,426 / 20,000.
thoughts; i usually don’t write on the weekends, so getting anything done at all was actually a nice surprise! now i am a rebel by typical nanowrimo rules, having started with a wip of about 25k, but these are all new words. i don’t have a desk at my house so getting comfortable to write was a task in and of itself, but i did have a good time trying to get these words in!
excerpt;
The aforementioned trees are looming overhead, old and tall and fragrant. They are non threatening though, cousins of my trees back home, the roaming forest of this part of the county just going and going and going. Somewhere in this forest, my family is waiting, desperate, hoping that I will make it back safely. Somewhere in this forest, the dead roam, searching only for flesh and blood and carnage. My hope, for its part, is that the dead are far, far away from my family.
project : calla lilies.
word count : 362.
prompt : from @wordsforyourwip : finite, trundle, rail, dose
taglist : n/a. let me know if you’d like to be added!
I did a project on the Lost Colony when I was in elementary school, and so I know that, and I know Sienna knows it because she stood asking me question after question for well over ten minutes - all the way up until her mama had to drag her away. At the time, she frustrated me, an unknown entity who was surely just trying to bring me to the brink of failure. For years all I wanted was to give her a dose of the hell that she put me through, convinced it was purposeful. Now, I’m not so sure.
“So it is,” she replies, level toned, and continues, “But there are ghosts spread through all sectors of the country, I’m sure. It’s only a matter of time before some of them start to go off the rails.” And she says this in such a matter of fact way, as if we are not discussing something impossible, as if ghosts existing and feeling and attacking is not such a strange idea.
“You believe in ghosts?”
We roll to a slow and steady stop at one of the few stoplights in town, and when I take the chance to look over at her this time, she is looking back.
Sienna Bradley has a spattering of scars across her face, a walking homage to the accident that took her parents. And nobody talks about it, of course - or they don’t talk about it where they think she can hear them. But even I have heard the whispers, good hearing revealing laments about the poor orphan girl and questions on how she survived and sordid murmurs wondering if she had anything to do with it. She must have heard them too, passed around the county for months, making a home out of trundle beds and borrowed blankets. Yet she always came to school with a smile on her face, and they would make fun of her. We would make fun of her.
It wasn’t my best moment.
“The chance of their existence may be small, but it is finite. We can’t rule anything out, Calla. Coming from your family, I thought you would know that.”
