Quiet Farms

I lay on the ground. I twitch. I sob. My body aches and burns and throbs in blooming patches. My vision is filled with spots from staring sonward, but now he is gone. My overseer is gone much the same. Both are bittersweet, their roles in my life dramatically switched moments before they departed from it. I roll over in the long grass and my body pulses in complaint. The sand underneath is a hard yet unsteady surface. I take everything in without moving my head and aggravating my fresh injuries. The tower is toppled, my one place of refuge with the one person I could confide in. He was gone and in his wake he discarded everything. I feel kinship with the fallen tower. Everything but insects are silent once the sun sets. I lay there through the night.

On the second day I do not move either. I see grass close enough to my eyes to blur. Flecks of broken bark in the sand. Gentle clouds sliding across the sky. Seabirds crossing the shoreline. Pieces of graveled stoneworks all around me. I feel the grass grow beneath me and the bugs crawl over me. I work my fingers into the sandy soil and feel the roots of the grass. I hear my own deep breaths and let my body’s weakness drain out slowly. I hear waves crashing and insects chirping. I smell the comfortable scent of charcoal and saltwater spray. I taste the absence of blood in my mouth. I sleep through the night. I let the bugs crawl over me and the grass grow beneath me. I wake up finally grounded. My heavy breaths that belabored themselves with guilt the day previous are calm and do not hurt as they expand in my chest.

I stand, finally. My body adjusts quickly. I consider leaving this place, where I spent my youth suffering, but I decide I have other desires greater. I begin by gathering the scrap of the tower. I drag hunks of stone and beams across the ground. I sort it into piles of intact and broken materials. I stack piles of bricks and boards apart from the mass of rubble. I clean the earth where the tower used to stand. I arrange a small shelter from its remains, enough to cover myself. I line the pile of rubble with a low wall so its breakage doesn’t stray. There are swaths of yellowing foliage and patches of char. Here I turn over the soil and form shallow culverts. I shuck splinters of wood from broken and burned beams and lay them in the culverts. These are the beginnings of my garden. I plan to spend much more time working in this place in the world until I’ve undone the harm upon it. I barely notice that I don’t feel hungry or tired. In building this place, I am manifest.

I spend years there. I don’t mind. I like the pace of change nature sets. I like having no obligation but my own. I want for very little outside comfort. My shelter becomes more welcoming and warm as time passes, I make sure it does. My garden grows more vibrant and colorful as time passes, I make sure it does. The world is better for my action, I make sure it is. I stew teas and make sweets. I make friends. It isn’t like discovery is impossible. At first people find me accidentally, but soon people come to me for what I’ve built. I let people stay as long as they’d like. I cook for them when I can and I eat with them when they allow me. It is a place of welcome for anyone who needs it. Once I’ve spent as many tranquil years in my home as I had fraught ones prior, I meet her.

April 7th, 1965.

Before continuing, you must first pass through the Underworld

Spawn 6

Quiet Farms