closed starter: @solidgrovnd location: the ranch helltown event #1
The morning had moved Jude fast. Awoken before first light, dawn shrouded by snowfall—light at first it had rapidly become fierce. The wind's violent assault against the ranch had made her movements rushed and graceless. Duty. It had to be demanding force to drag her away from the bed. The bed where Shaw slept twisted in her sheets. Again. She knew better than to count days or remain where something whole threatened to spill out of her. She had kissed their temple, free from the eyes of ruin. If she stayed for a moment more, the world would long be left to collapse before she had noticed anything else at all. No solace was ever kept.
A loose wood panel ripped from its place had been sharp against Jude’s cheekbone, just a surface wound—not the deep cut of the wind that howled past. The animals had been ushered into the barn without much convincing, huddled together purposefully now. They pulled survival from each other easily. Less complicated than the humans of their shared hell, with no teeth bared or bloodshed—safe together. She could only make do with tarpaulin and hay, quiet the whistle of the wind. The barn seemed to hold strong against the onslaught. The newer wood enforcements steadfast against the blizzard although something like a callous joke now. Was she always just awaiting tragedy?
The barn was closed tight now, at least, not swaying like the trees. The earth was white and stark, almost blinding. In it, a single patch of colour. A flower. It stuck out defiant in the snow, it wouldn’t survive. It should have already perished. Jude’s brow knitted together, she didn't look away. The wind persisted, the bloom swayed—a violent movement. It was ritualistic. A half-remembered conversation, then. Lectures from a nun. A memory dull in the howl of the wind. Scoffed at by the time by a teenager tall and bruised but words still faithfully retained. Everything had been kept, just hidden away. A weight dragged behind her.
Scorn for the world won’t protect your heart, child.
Jude plucked the flower from the small gap in the earth. For Shaw, she thought but she didn’t know why. She could no longer hear the world. There was only the wind. It screeched now, then, in a moment of grievous clarity: a plunge felt in the gut. The pine tree by the cabin bent, then broke—landed on the roof with a putrid crack. Her tongue turned metallic in her mouth, there was only a single thought left. Chant or prayer: Shaw.
The bedroom door was thrust open into nothingness, floorboards and steps barely touched on the way. It was scarcely a room now, the sky had leaked in entirely. The tree was all she could see, yet she pushed forward. “Shaw?” A noise desperate and bare in the throat, a sound not known for years—decades. She had stopped begging when God had not listened. Only the wind answered. Silently, her hand unclenched to search, to unearth and find, a flower dropped to the floor—a thought forgotten.
“Shaw, please.”
For once, God would hear her.