a church basement set up for a meeting. u.u
there ought to be 𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 signs for crossing thresholds & declarations. fezco's devotion here had begun as 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨, one became two and two became three. suddenly this man who had once dismissed the entire endeavor as bible belt, freak nonsense .. well, he finds himself traversing the same carpet of the basement every thursday evening. it's funny how ali never really convinced him of anything. ali simply asks, asked a few times, then waited for him with a patience possessing a far greater lethality than persuasion ever could. [ addiction, loss, loss of self. ] these few words drift through his ear with the indistinct quality of radio frequencies heard from the opposite room. every week a new tragedy is shared. fathers, daughters, pills, bottles, funerals. the strange thing about it was all the stories sounded fairly different until they didn't. every lesson seemed to converge upon the same destination.
fezco spends this meeting in the same place as he'd spent the others, the hallway outside the room. shoulder against the wall and pretending not to listen, but he was. the meeting has long since concluded and emptied out by the time he pushes the door inward & the basement would ordinarily exist in that peculiar state of 𝗮𝗳𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗵 wherein occupancy has departed but the folding chairs and styrofoam evidence remains. his gaze catches upon the figure still planted amongst the ruins. she sits amidst folding chairs and cooling coffee with an air of improbable permanence, as though the room had gradually emptied itself around her rather than the other way around. [ whatever momentum carried everyone else toward exits and parking lots and homes seems to have missed her entirely. ] when she appears to startle, he speaks. “ nah, you good. you straight. ” the words emerge roughened by fatigue, smoke, & habitual understatement. simple things. small things. “ thought y'all all'd be gone. ” the silence that follows possesses a certain weight to it. overhead, fluorescent bulbs continue their quiet dirge and entire lives unfold beyond the boundaries of the basement. yet his attentions drifts backward as he makes his way toward the coffee pot and water station. “ you believe all that ? .. ali swear by it. but he be drinkin' this shitty coffee, too. so, i dun'no. ” : ⋆ settings prompts.
