"You don't give up easily, do you?" Time whispers in my ear. He is behind me, but when I turn, he is not there.
"It's just the way things are, the way they've always been," I feel Jivi's arms around my waist, hear his breath, his speech in my ear, feel him...
...but again, when I turn, he is gone.
"Is there a reason for this?" I blindly whisper to the cosmos, and there I am, standing on the endless fields, charred, twisted, jagged bones and burnt tree stumps poking out along the pathway to the small house, squatting halfway across the landscape.
I knock at the door, and it's the Crone.
"Didn't expect you so soon," she looks at me cheerily, lines and lines across her face all springing to attention, to announce her joy. "I haven't even gotten the tea on yet."
I step into her little one-room cabin, swept tiles covered with handstitched rugs, a kettle sitting atop a four-burner range and oven that looks less out of place than it should. The Crone doesn't care much for Time, but they are long acquaintances, as all inhabitants of these Edges are.
"So what brings you to me, Child?" she asks as she shuffles towards that kettle, "Oh, sit down, sit down!" she waves a hand at a big puffy green armchair as she picks up the kettle and waves some water into it. "Last time you dared cross these burnt regions you were an even littler thing than you are now, did you forget your way?"
I blink, though surprisingly, I find I am not in the last nervous. This cabin feels like home. A glance at the window, its curtains permanently pulled shut against the endless twilight outside reminds me that, well, maybe it is, and maybe it isn't. Everywhere here is a place I've been before. I just can't remember why --
I glance at my left arm, a searing pain rips up it, and she turns suddenly from the stove.
"That arm still bothering you?" She shuffles over, places her hands on my forearm, and the pain is gone, though it leaks away slowly, not like its onset. "That was quite a break, when you were here."
I nod, remembering a bone jutting out, to match the bones strewn across the landscape. I remember the fires as they were burning; I remember looking back at this house, and wondering if I would ever see it again...
She smiles. "You can speak, anytime, can't you?"
"Oh!" I smile back at her, her face so close to mine. "I just have too many words, I think, that's what it always is, so many words that I don't even know where to begin, how to unravel them..."
She nods, stands back up, settles herself on a blue plaid armchair facing me. Something of God to her as she smiles.
"Of course, she's my daughter," she nods to my thoughts.
I blink again.
"What brought you here?" she presses again, and the kettle begins to wheeze, burble. Perhaps it wants to speak, perhaps it just is trying to help fill the silence.
"I -- I don't know, actually. I just..."
"Was curious?"
Perhaps. Hmm. "I guess? I can't remember."
"Oh, that's alright. These places make it easy to forget, these are the Forgotten Plains, even as much as they are part of the Endless Plains, the fires, you know. There is little left here for your sort. But... this is your sort of place, then, too, isn't it?" Her eyes meet mine, their ocean blue the more stunning for the lines etched around them, reminding that they have seen things as vast as the ocean itself...
"Oh, stop it!" she chuckles. "You flatter me as much as you did as a youngster."
"I grew up here."
She nods. "Before the fires."
The meadow.
"You do love your meadows. Your flowers... your winds... you were quite something, my little golden-haired girl," she smiles again. But only briefly, then looks away quite sadly. "You all were. But you... you somehow survived, escaped."
Just me. I look down, the kettle whistles, she presses a hot mug between my hands, and before I look up, even, she is back in her own chair, her own mug grasped in a mirror image of mine.
She smiles. "I never cease to surprise you, do I, granddaughter?"
I blink.
She now looks stern. "Everyone of these fields is my child, my grandchild. The soil, the air."
I nod. Look towards the window again.
I take a sip of the tea.
"Is it lonely, here, grandmother?" I am barely whispering, but the words come out solid, full, as if not even slightly whispered.
She looks around, pointedly. Pictures, frames, cover the walls, piles of knitted cloths and crocheted toys dot the floor. She looks back, meets my eyes. "I often have company. And when I do not, I have myself," she sips her own tea.
"Grandmother... I'm lonely."
She nods. "I know. That is why you came, isn't it?"
I nod. "I guess so. I just... don't know why it keeps happening, why I always lose everyone, just when I think I'm finally somewhere. Maybe... maybe I wanted to see, if where it began, where I began..."
A smile twitches across her lips. "You remember."
"I remember..." I nod, and sip at my tea. Chatter, and sleep, and soft things, and fires, and charcoal, and the wind...
The wind...
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.1){kind=small}
busy
decent
sad
exhausted
refreshed
calm
nostalgic
