02-22-2012, 01:17 AM
The Dampwoods. Didn't really specify but it's kind of middayish. !_!
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There were some days she woke up and she felt as though she did not remember who she was. Or, rather, she was who she was, but not the same—not the whole person who had closed her eyes and drifted halfway to the Beyond in the nighttime hours. Pieces of her fell away into that void, only to be fished back later, pieced piecemeal back onto her person before she stepped once more fresh into the world. This day was one of those in-between days, however, when she felt fragmented. To look back on her life was strange, confusing. Her memories were there—most of them… of course, how could you feel something missing that you didn’t know was there to begin with?—but they felt in the wrong order, thrown into confusion. It was if someone had gathered them and strewn them with a careless hand onto the field of her mind, instead of planting them carefully and orderedly in a furrow. The girl’s teeth ground and she did not notice she did it. She only heard the sound—the quiet rasping that spoke of internal conflict that she could scarcely understand herself. She made a small fire that morning, boiled water and mixed strips of bark to make a thin tea. She drank to clear her mind but the only thing it did was burn her mouth and warm her from her stomach out.
She gathered her things. Foxglove’s entire world existed in a bag, tanned deerskin on a wooden frame which she slung across her shoulder. There she had her collections of herbs and talismans, her sleeping-deerskin, the tools with which she made fire and tea and cooked food, a fine knife made of sharpened stone yet cut closer than tooth and claw. She needed nothing else, not from herself or the world or anyone else. Of all the gifts Grandmother had bestowed upon the fever-touched girl, the two greatest had been the items she carried and her self-sufficiency.
Her footsteps continued doggedly to the ocean, the great sea, a lake that extended to infinity. Foxglove wanted to see it but she was in no hurry.
She was never in a hurry.
Along her path she recognized a plant growing nearby. She often forgot the names, only remembering them for their purpose, or for the names they had that could not be spoken in the tongue of breath. Names were things she rarely seemed to understand. Most of the time she seemed to have forgotten her own; it meant nothing to her. Grandmother had only started calling her Foxglove when she had grown sick of “girl.” A fragment of a memory stirred a name: Grandmother was cranky that morning for her back hurt her greatly. “Girl! Bring the tobacco, and my pipe. My joints pain me.” Tobacco. But what did that have to say about the plant at all? She knelt, lowering her pack to rest beside her as she harvested, putting it away to dry later. Considering for a moment, she took some that Grandmother had left, setting it into the pipe and lighting it. The girl sat cross-legged, breathing of the smoke and exhaling, watching the shapes the gray-silver took in the air before the wind claimed it.
What did names have to do with anything at all. They were shortcuts that the impatient used to expedite their lives. She had no desire to speed anything along. She watched the sunlight and smoked and listened to the whispering of wind in the trees until she heard the murmuring of spirits behind that. They were restless. Living and dead, all impatient.
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There were some days she woke up and she felt as though she did not remember who she was. Or, rather, she was who she was, but not the same—not the whole person who had closed her eyes and drifted halfway to the Beyond in the nighttime hours. Pieces of her fell away into that void, only to be fished back later, pieced piecemeal back onto her person before she stepped once more fresh into the world. This day was one of those in-between days, however, when she felt fragmented. To look back on her life was strange, confusing. Her memories were there—most of them… of course, how could you feel something missing that you didn’t know was there to begin with?—but they felt in the wrong order, thrown into confusion. It was if someone had gathered them and strewn them with a careless hand onto the field of her mind, instead of planting them carefully and orderedly in a furrow. The girl’s teeth ground and she did not notice she did it. She only heard the sound—the quiet rasping that spoke of internal conflict that she could scarcely understand herself. She made a small fire that morning, boiled water and mixed strips of bark to make a thin tea. She drank to clear her mind but the only thing it did was burn her mouth and warm her from her stomach out.
She gathered her things. Foxglove’s entire world existed in a bag, tanned deerskin on a wooden frame which she slung across her shoulder. There she had her collections of herbs and talismans, her sleeping-deerskin, the tools with which she made fire and tea and cooked food, a fine knife made of sharpened stone yet cut closer than tooth and claw. She needed nothing else, not from herself or the world or anyone else. Of all the gifts Grandmother had bestowed upon the fever-touched girl, the two greatest had been the items she carried and her self-sufficiency.
Her footsteps continued doggedly to the ocean, the great sea, a lake that extended to infinity. Foxglove wanted to see it but she was in no hurry.
She was never in a hurry.
Along her path she recognized a plant growing nearby. She often forgot the names, only remembering them for their purpose, or for the names they had that could not be spoken in the tongue of breath. Names were things she rarely seemed to understand. Most of the time she seemed to have forgotten her own; it meant nothing to her. Grandmother had only started calling her Foxglove when she had grown sick of “girl.” A fragment of a memory stirred a name: Grandmother was cranky that morning for her back hurt her greatly. “Girl! Bring the tobacco, and my pipe. My joints pain me.” Tobacco. But what did that have to say about the plant at all? She knelt, lowering her pack to rest beside her as she harvested, putting it away to dry later. Considering for a moment, she took some that Grandmother had left, setting it into the pipe and lighting it. The girl sat cross-legged, breathing of the smoke and exhaling, watching the shapes the gray-silver took in the air before the wind claimed it.
What did names have to do with anything at all. They were shortcuts that the impatient used to expedite their lives. She had no desire to speed anything along. She watched the sunlight and smoked and listened to the whispering of wind in the trees until she heard the murmuring of spirits behind that. They were restless. Living and dead, all impatient.