Post by Katpride on Apr 23, 2022 5:28:54 GMT
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There are moments you can’t run away from. Not in the heat of it all, the immediacy and urgency breathing down your neck and restricting your thoughts to the next movement, the next instant. There’s a certain kind of freedom found in the narrow scope of a fistfight, the sting of a scrape or the unforgiving coolness of a blade demanding center stage in the mind and promising terrible consequences for being ignored.
There are moments that stick, tacky and dripping and impossible to forget, drowning the entire world in red and shifting everything two centimeters to the left. Juice, paint, blood, none of it stains quite the same as a terrible revelation that only comes to light when it’s a little too late to do anything about it.
There are softer moments, too. Curled in scratchy hay, half-asleep from the steady rhythm of the workhorse hauling its trailer through the field. A warm body next to theirs, hand in hand, quiet conversation drifting over them like a light fog. A face that they can’t forget, so vivid and real they could count every freckle, every stray hair falling out of a messy braid, every shift and pinch of expression. A sense-memory etched into the backs of their eyelids.
In their memory, they reach out a hand to trace the back of a curled finger along the gentle curve of her jaw, and she pushes forward into their space like it’s the simplest thing in the world, and they know it can’t last but they let themself have this anyway. Up until the trailer comes to a halt and they’re dumped out along with the hay.
Lark was sixteen, and they just wanted to forget about everything for a while. Where better to run from their future than the distant past? A quick change into some clothes stolen off a drying line, and they could’ve been any lost farmer’s kid, albeit with some odd coloration.
In hindsight, it was hypocritical of them to so eagerly go chasing after connections in the past while all but refusing to pursue them in the present. Maybe it was the distance - only they could cross the gap between then and now, an easy bridge to burn if it came down to that. Maybe it was something cruel and cold inside of them that insisted on a foolproof way to cut their losses, a relationship doomed by something other than their own knowledge.
Regardless of their intentions, they found what they were looking for. Luck and circumstance led them to a girl around their age, or maybe a little older, who laughed when they interrupted her apple picking by nearly falling out of the tree she was reaching up into. She was kind enough to call off the herding dog when it tried to chase them away, instead beckoning them into the shade of the tree to share an apple and swap stories.
Although they only barely matched the part they set for themself, she quickly accepted their story. Spinning themself into an eccentric traveler was close enough to the truth without revealing anything incriminating, and it meant she didn’t question their odd way of acting or speaking or doing anything, really. The details of it hardly mattered when held up against the reality of a stranger in her small slice of the world. They were sure to tell her of the short duration of their visit; a summer, and no more, as they had the whole world to see.
It was simple, in a way so few things are. They settled into the routine of afternoons and nights by her side, quietly disappearing back to their own time every once in a while when the strain caught up to them. Still, they did their best to stretch the days into weeks, and weeks into months. Hiding their powers from her was a necessity, but it stung every time she’d fuss over their unhealed scratches or give them an odd look when they stumbled over a slang word at least a century out from being known. It would never have been something that lasted years, or even more than the summer, but they could almost pretend otherwise when she’d take their hand and smile at them like that.
She had big ideas about the state of the country, and the way she’d run the farm when she grew old enough to take over, and how she’d rear the new filly her best mare had just given birth to. Lark would follow her around the farm and listen to her endless well of opinions on nearly every aspect of the daily minutiae of her life, lending a hand where they could and enjoying the cadence of her voice more than any of the individual words she spoke. She didn’t seem to mind if they didn’t have much of an opinion themself, and she’d teach them things they didn’t even think to ask about.
Now, the knowledge sits with them. They know how to tell the sweetest oranges by scent and how to approach a horse and how to tip a cow, but that knowing has nowhere to go. And so they keep it in the photo album of memory; endless lessons on braiding hair that they somehow fumbled each time, which step to avoid when climbing the ladder to the loft in the barn, the way her fingers fit in between their own.
There are moments you can’t run away from. Not in the heat of it all, the immediacy and urgency breathing down your neck and restricting your thoughts to the next movement, the next instant. There’s a certain kind of freedom found in the narrow scope of a fistfight, the sting of a scrape or the unforgiving coolness of a blade demanding center stage in the mind and promising terrible consequences for being ignored.
There are moments that stick, tacky and dripping and impossible to forget, drowning the entire world in red and shifting everything two centimeters to the left. Juice, paint, blood, none of it stains quite the same as a terrible revelation that only comes to light when it’s a little too late to do anything about it.
There are softer moments, too. Curled in scratchy hay, half-asleep from the steady rhythm of the workhorse hauling its trailer through the field. A warm body next to theirs, hand in hand, quiet conversation drifting over them like a light fog. A face that they can’t forget, so vivid and real they could count every freckle, every stray hair falling out of a messy braid, every shift and pinch of expression. A sense-memory etched into the backs of their eyelids.
In their memory, they reach out a hand to trace the back of a curled finger along the gentle curve of her jaw, and she pushes forward into their space like it’s the simplest thing in the world, and they know it can’t last but they let themself have this anyway. Up until the trailer comes to a halt and they’re dumped out along with the hay.
Lark was sixteen, and they just wanted to forget about everything for a while. Where better to run from their future than the distant past? A quick change into some clothes stolen off a drying line, and they could’ve been any lost farmer’s kid, albeit with some odd coloration.
In hindsight, it was hypocritical of them to so eagerly go chasing after connections in the past while all but refusing to pursue them in the present. Maybe it was the distance - only they could cross the gap between then and now, an easy bridge to burn if it came down to that. Maybe it was something cruel and cold inside of them that insisted on a foolproof way to cut their losses, a relationship doomed by something other than their own knowledge.
Regardless of their intentions, they found what they were looking for. Luck and circumstance led them to a girl around their age, or maybe a little older, who laughed when they interrupted her apple picking by nearly falling out of the tree she was reaching up into. She was kind enough to call off the herding dog when it tried to chase them away, instead beckoning them into the shade of the tree to share an apple and swap stories.
Although they only barely matched the part they set for themself, she quickly accepted their story. Spinning themself into an eccentric traveler was close enough to the truth without revealing anything incriminating, and it meant she didn’t question their odd way of acting or speaking or doing anything, really. The details of it hardly mattered when held up against the reality of a stranger in her small slice of the world. They were sure to tell her of the short duration of their visit; a summer, and no more, as they had the whole world to see.
It was simple, in a way so few things are. They settled into the routine of afternoons and nights by her side, quietly disappearing back to their own time every once in a while when the strain caught up to them. Still, they did their best to stretch the days into weeks, and weeks into months. Hiding their powers from her was a necessity, but it stung every time she’d fuss over their unhealed scratches or give them an odd look when they stumbled over a slang word at least a century out from being known. It would never have been something that lasted years, or even more than the summer, but they could almost pretend otherwise when she’d take their hand and smile at them like that.
She had big ideas about the state of the country, and the way she’d run the farm when she grew old enough to take over, and how she’d rear the new filly her best mare had just given birth to. Lark would follow her around the farm and listen to her endless well of opinions on nearly every aspect of the daily minutiae of her life, lending a hand where they could and enjoying the cadence of her voice more than any of the individual words she spoke. She didn’t seem to mind if they didn’t have much of an opinion themself, and she’d teach them things they didn’t even think to ask about.
Now, the knowledge sits with them. They know how to tell the sweetest oranges by scent and how to approach a horse and how to tip a cow, but that knowing has nowhere to go. And so they keep it in the photo album of memory; endless lessons on braiding hair that they somehow fumbled each time, which step to avoid when climbing the ladder to the loft in the barn, the way her fingers fit in between their own.
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In the present day, her family’s farm is still standing, but no longer tended by anyone. It isn’t the same as they remember, with renovations brought about by the many faceless descendents of her family line. The farmhouse is unrecognizable, having caught fire one especially dry summer and been rebuilt from the ground up. The fields are overgrown, and the wood of the barn seems barely capable of holding its own weight.
Lark, no longer sixteen, pushes past the barely opened door and climbs to the loft just to watch the stars through the collapsed roof of the old barn. The constellations are the same ones they taught to her on endless warm summer nights, but the wood is cold beneath them and the breeze cuts through them like a knife.
If they had the time or the desire, maybe they’d replace the crumbling planks or even venture into the house. But, as it stands, they’re likely the only person to remember this place, a little farm out in the middle of nowhere with a town that dried up over the years until the last stubborn farmer finally admitted defeat and moved to more fertile land.
Soon this farm will be forgotten entirely, so there’s really no point in fixing it now. Better to let it fade into obscurity until some intrepid explorer stumbles across a collapsed barn where, once, there was light and laughter and…
The moon is beautiful tonight, full and high in the sky, turning everything to silver where it shines through the hole in the roof. Maybe, in another life, they’ll be able to watch the dawn with her again.
They would like that.
In the present day, her family’s farm is still standing, but no longer tended by anyone. It isn’t the same as they remember, with renovations brought about by the many faceless descendents of her family line. The farmhouse is unrecognizable, having caught fire one especially dry summer and been rebuilt from the ground up. The fields are overgrown, and the wood of the barn seems barely capable of holding its own weight.
Lark, no longer sixteen, pushes past the barely opened door and climbs to the loft just to watch the stars through the collapsed roof of the old barn. The constellations are the same ones they taught to her on endless warm summer nights, but the wood is cold beneath them and the breeze cuts through them like a knife.
If they had the time or the desire, maybe they’d replace the crumbling planks or even venture into the house. But, as it stands, they’re likely the only person to remember this place, a little farm out in the middle of nowhere with a town that dried up over the years until the last stubborn farmer finally admitted defeat and moved to more fertile land.
Soon this farm will be forgotten entirely, so there’s really no point in fixing it now. Better to let it fade into obscurity until some intrepid explorer stumbles across a collapsed barn where, once, there was light and laughter and…
The moon is beautiful tonight, full and high in the sky, turning everything to silver where it shines through the hole in the roof. Maybe, in another life, they’ll be able to watch the dawn with her again.
They would like that.