May 5, 2018 15:32:28 GMT
Post by CBE-177/"Anna" on May 5, 2018 15:32:28 GMT
Going home?
177 nodded and pocketed her phone, indicating she felt she had said what she needed to. Jack, of course, hadn't understood what they said, and Anna didn't feel inclined to clarify.
Going home. As if going back to Russia was going home for her. Jack didn't understand. The Russia that was her home wasn't the Russia of the cities, or the cathedrals, or expansionist government. Her Russia was a different on, a quieter one. One that subsisted in houses of wattle-and-dob, goats that wondered cobblestone streets on broken leashes, horse-carts clattering to bring milk to the doorstep and meat to the butcher shop. A world where the winters where cold but- as long as you were simply a mute human and not a monster- hearts were warm. She was given to understand that such places were vanishing now, if they were not gone already. And she had forgotten where to go or how to find it again.
No, she doubted that going to Russia would mean going home. She doubted it would even be returning to a familiar world. Surely all the things they had in this place- a television in every house, internet, phones that showed movies- had come there as well. All was irretrievably different. There was no more going home for her.
For just a moment she felt a pang of sadness at the thought. She had fled that place, and now she had come to miss it. She knew the sting of rejection, and yet she now looked back and thought that perhaps her neighbors had not been bad people, in the end. Not like some she had met since.
She looked around the room. This wasn't home either, not yet. It might never be. For now it was just a roof over her head and a place to sleep. She wondered, with a sudden, sharp sense of longing, if she would ever have such a place again. Carefully, she eased the feeling out of herself, folding it up and putting it away from her. Such feelings didn't matter. Such feelings didn't help. What was, was, and you had to live with it.
She thought of those days in Laboratory 1, the day the man had come for her. It was distant, now, and she could remember without flinching. How he had touched her, how she had fought her rising gorge to live, live, just survive until it was over. She remembered when they had shot him. She remembered how her belly had grown. A child. Could it be?
She shook her head, just slightly. Whatever came next, there could be no guessing it. Only the slow, steady advance of time, and the determination, step by step, to keep going and live through it.
Jack Fontaine
177 nodded and pocketed her phone, indicating she felt she had said what she needed to. Jack, of course, hadn't understood what they said, and Anna didn't feel inclined to clarify.
Going home. As if going back to Russia was going home for her. Jack didn't understand. The Russia that was her home wasn't the Russia of the cities, or the cathedrals, or expansionist government. Her Russia was a different on, a quieter one. One that subsisted in houses of wattle-and-dob, goats that wondered cobblestone streets on broken leashes, horse-carts clattering to bring milk to the doorstep and meat to the butcher shop. A world where the winters where cold but- as long as you were simply a mute human and not a monster- hearts were warm. She was given to understand that such places were vanishing now, if they were not gone already. And she had forgotten where to go or how to find it again.
No, she doubted that going to Russia would mean going home. She doubted it would even be returning to a familiar world. Surely all the things they had in this place- a television in every house, internet, phones that showed movies- had come there as well. All was irretrievably different. There was no more going home for her.
For just a moment she felt a pang of sadness at the thought. She had fled that place, and now she had come to miss it. She knew the sting of rejection, and yet she now looked back and thought that perhaps her neighbors had not been bad people, in the end. Not like some she had met since.
She looked around the room. This wasn't home either, not yet. It might never be. For now it was just a roof over her head and a place to sleep. She wondered, with a sudden, sharp sense of longing, if she would ever have such a place again. Carefully, she eased the feeling out of herself, folding it up and putting it away from her. Such feelings didn't matter. Such feelings didn't help. What was, was, and you had to live with it.
She thought of those days in Laboratory 1, the day the man had come for her. It was distant, now, and she could remember without flinching. How he had touched her, how she had fought her rising gorge to live, live, just survive until it was over. She remembered when they had shot him. She remembered how her belly had grown. A child. Could it be?
She shook her head, just slightly. Whatever came next, there could be no guessing it. Only the slow, steady advance of time, and the determination, step by step, to keep going and live through it.
-FIN-
Jack Fontaine
