safehouse.
what does it mean to be safe? it’s hard to recall. maybe she never really had a clear picture. a house was always a physical thing, a need and not a want, walls but not a home. houses were temporary, shelter was the name of the game. but yani has always been quick footed, like a babbling brook racing through the trees. not that any of that matters.
at six, a safehouse was the closet in her mother’s bedroom - the only bedroom in their apartment, a shared endeavor that was never hers, not really. she was a burden like that, a cot shoved in a corner. but she liked the closet, the dark and the quiet. at nine it was the roof of the apartment building where she could pretend the wind was fresh air and not a stagnant haze of pollution propelled by machinery, distant factories nestled into buildings that block out the sky and beyond. ( and, lee yani has never really seen the sky, if she thinks about it, but she doesn’t, keeps her nose to the ground, ear to the gutter, knows her place )
at twelve it’s not much more than an old warehouse, some hollowed out testament to dilapidation. there’s some old mattresses, scavenged appliances, a broken down space heater. by fourteen it’s her and a herd of other kids, like they’re building some kind of makeshift family, drawn in to the light of her, some mouthpiece for the lost youth, some kind of broken promise for a brighter future.
home, now, isn’t her apartment, either. with bared walls and hanging shelves. it’s a place to be, a place to rest. but her house, her home, her truest self has been given to her, hand delivered, a monstrosity of clouded green glass, like an old tonic bottle. buzzing, distant neon lights and sunlight mimickers and carefully monitored hydroponic units, precisely filled reservoirs, modified pvc structures that lift herbs and vegetation to new heights, amidst a spindlework of ladders, pulleys, chains.
home is a safehouse, a greenhouse. a workspace with magic at her fingertips. humid even in the dead of winter, she’s bared arms and a haphazard ponytail, a smudge of dirt on her cheek and distraction on her features when the interlopers steps distract her, draw her attention. “oh, shit,” she mumbles, blinking through the haze of pulling herself from work to the present space with some abrupt intention. “hey, i wasn’t expecting you yet.” she admits, pauses, to look over at the clock. “mm, i guess i should have been.” it’s been three hours since she looked at the clock just a second ago. oops. “busy afternoon?” she adds, turning to glance at him, leaning back against the edge of the metal table.
@neojinsol