The Baker's Wife (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
andhiswife) wrote2017-06-19 10:04 pm
andhiswife) wrote2017-06-19 10:04 pm
Entry tags:
The Tale You Tell
It's been a difficult week.
That's actually an understatement. But she can't let the full weight of it settle on her, not when she's out in public like this. So for as long as she's out here, doing some shopping, it's just been a difficult week.
She's told Baz and Simon about her situation. They'd offered to give her time off, but that wasn't what she wanted. The Gardens are one of the few places where she doesn't feel like climbing the walls. There's too much else going on, too many other things that require her attention. It's everywhere else that's the problem. Her apartment is too quiet and too empty and too immaculate; she can't even justify housework anymore because everything that could possibly need doing has already been done thrice over.
And she knows she has friends who would help her, who would be happy to provide company or distractions or whatever she needed. But that would require telling them. Repeating the story wouldn't make it any more real than it is already, but the thought of burdening anyone else with it -- and how could something this heavy not be a burden? -- turns her stomach. So much so that she's been politely deflecting the invitations she's received, rather than try to face anyone.
She'll say this for texting: it makes it easier to lie.
The thought of food rather turns her stomach, too, but she's getting groceries, anyway. Even if the chief appeal of cooking is making a mess that she would then have to tidy up, it's still a necessary chore. Her clothing is starting to hang a bit looser than it ought to, and she doesn't want to make new garments for what she knows, distantly, to be an impermanent state of affairs. So, groceries. She can do this.
[Find Greta looking terrible either at or en route to a grocery store, or on her way back to Candlewood. Closed unless we've spoken; hmu if you still want in.]
That's actually an understatement. But she can't let the full weight of it settle on her, not when she's out in public like this. So for as long as she's out here, doing some shopping, it's just been a difficult week.
She's told Baz and Simon about her situation. They'd offered to give her time off, but that wasn't what she wanted. The Gardens are one of the few places where she doesn't feel like climbing the walls. There's too much else going on, too many other things that require her attention. It's everywhere else that's the problem. Her apartment is too quiet and too empty and too immaculate; she can't even justify housework anymore because everything that could possibly need doing has already been done thrice over.
And she knows she has friends who would help her, who would be happy to provide company or distractions or whatever she needed. But that would require telling them. Repeating the story wouldn't make it any more real than it is already, but the thought of burdening anyone else with it -- and how could something this heavy not be a burden? -- turns her stomach. So much so that she's been politely deflecting the invitations she's received, rather than try to face anyone.
She'll say this for texting: it makes it easier to lie.
The thought of food rather turns her stomach, too, but she's getting groceries, anyway. Even if the chief appeal of cooking is making a mess that she would then have to tidy up, it's still a necessary chore. Her clothing is starting to hang a bit looser than it ought to, and she doesn't want to make new garments for what she knows, distantly, to be an impermanent state of affairs. So, groceries. She can do this.
[Find Greta looking terrible either at or en route to a grocery store, or on her way back to Candlewood. Closed unless we've spoken; hmu if you still want in.]
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Besides, it wouldn't be the first time such a thing had happened. Sam's told her a little of the island he was on before he and Jordan arrived here. Maybe that's just how it works: one world finishes with you, and you're shunted on to a different one. Such an arbitrary notion wouldn't catch on amongst the religious sect, so she's not surprised that it's never come up before, but that doesn't make it wrong.
"I suppose there are worse ways for the universe to work," she allows after giving it a few moments' thought. "But there are better ways, too. People who have a home to go back to... they ought to be allowed that." Assuming 'home' isn't relentlessly awful, at least. She has friends from nasty enough places that she'd as soon they just stuck around Darrow forever, though Jessica isn't one of them. For her sake, she can't just throw herself behind the idea that there's some other random world waiting for them after this one.
no subject
(Also, even though I would never say it to them directly, I think it's more important to give the living a chance to go back than to give the dead a place where they can continue. Maybe that's cruel of me. But it seems worse to take a life from a person who still had one to live.)
"I'm going to keep looking for that. Or at least making sure that the researchers who are doing the best job continue to get funding for their work. But... I guess the important thing is, try not to lose all hope yet," I tell Greta, reaching for her hand. "You have every reason to be angry, to be upset, to be sad. But this is not the end. You know?"