[That's the point, the purpose of what's to come. She gives Midge's hand a gentle squeeze and closes her eyes, drawing in a deep breath. Slow. Steady.
The memory comes, as memories do, half-numb. Sensation shifts and flickers and finally coalesces, a story told and retold and gently altered by the retelling.
Prairie is barefoot on the grass. She's nine and three quarters years old which is nearly ten which is nearly grown, and certainly old enough to be outside on her own. It's where she best likes to be: here in the breeze, with the scent of the earth, of grass crushed underfoot, the sensation of it brushing curious blades against her skin.
She feels it acutely; even in memory, both touch and scent are strong. Balance, even, direction: she has a sense of space gently foreign to someone who has never been what she is now, here in this remembered space. There is no vision -- or rather, nothing that seems like vision. Darkness, though her eyes are open, but the brain compensates in strange ways: as if in response to the shifting sensation of walking, the sluggish back-and-forth skid of her cane across the lawn, colours and shapes blossom and swirl distantly in that span of black.
What happens is abrupt: the distant click and creak of an opening door and then footfalls, too many and too rapid. There comes ragged breathing, panting, ever closer; a cold, wet nose presses against the back of her hand, her cheek. Animal breath, dog-smell; he bounds around her, curious and playful. All tongue, all teeth, a wolf, a monster, impossibly vast, everywhere at once to her surprised, addled senses. The shape of him menaces the horizon of her imagination; her heart pounds and she freezes, tears burning her eyes, certain that if she tries to run he will be upon her, will chase, will bite.
It does end in a flight from the world. This too comes in flickers: later, laying in bed, it seems a grand adventure, it seems impossibly daunting to move into a world that has such surprises in it.
Years later still, the OA sits with Nancy, exhausted, the fire within her dimmed, and together they flip through an album of family photos. Here vision, if surreal, if strange: she has never seen herself in this phase of her childhood before, never seen Nancy and Abel so young, never seen the neighborhood as it was. She pauses in her turning of the heavy, plastic pages to linger on a photo of the two of them sat on their front lawn sharing a makeshift picnic, Nancy smiling at the camera, Prairie smiling in its rough direction, and behind them a man walks a labrador on a leash, its attention caught by the child OA once was. The animal seems so small, so much smaller than she'd remembered, so gentle.
OA eases them out of it, her smile softened, gently sad. All of this comes with regret: she can never go back, never absolve herself of the hurt she caused two people who did their best to love her, in spite of it all.]
no subject
It's not as scary as it seems.
[That's the point, the purpose of what's to come. She gives Midge's hand a gentle squeeze and closes her eyes, drawing in a deep breath. Slow. Steady.
The memory comes, as memories do, half-numb. Sensation shifts and flickers and finally coalesces, a story told and retold and gently altered by the retelling.
Prairie is barefoot on the grass. She's nine and three quarters years old which is nearly ten which is nearly grown, and certainly old enough to be outside on her own. It's where she best likes to be: here in the breeze, with the scent of the earth, of grass crushed underfoot, the sensation of it brushing curious blades against her skin.
She feels it acutely; even in memory, both touch and scent are strong. Balance, even, direction: she has a sense of space gently foreign to someone who has never been what she is now, here in this remembered space. There is no vision -- or rather, nothing that seems like vision. Darkness, though her eyes are open, but the brain compensates in strange ways: as if in response to the shifting sensation of walking, the sluggish back-and-forth skid of her cane across the lawn, colours and shapes blossom and swirl distantly in that span of black.
What happens is abrupt: the distant click and creak of an opening door and then footfalls, too many and too rapid. There comes ragged breathing, panting, ever closer; a cold, wet nose presses against the back of her hand, her cheek. Animal breath, dog-smell; he bounds around her, curious and playful. All tongue, all teeth, a wolf, a monster, impossibly vast, everywhere at once to her surprised, addled senses. The shape of him menaces the horizon of her imagination; her heart pounds and she freezes, tears burning her eyes, certain that if she tries to run he will be upon her, will chase, will bite.
It does end in a flight from the world. This too comes in flickers: later, laying in bed, it seems a grand adventure, it seems impossibly daunting to move into a world that has such surprises in it.
Years later still, the OA sits with Nancy, exhausted, the fire within her dimmed, and together they flip through an album of family photos. Here vision, if surreal, if strange: she has never seen herself in this phase of her childhood before, never seen Nancy and Abel so young, never seen the neighborhood as it was. She pauses in her turning of the heavy, plastic pages to linger on a photo of the two of them sat on their front lawn sharing a makeshift picnic, Nancy smiling at the camera, Prairie smiling in its rough direction, and behind them a man walks a labrador on a leash, its attention caught by the child OA once was. The animal seems so small, so much smaller than she'd remembered, so gentle.
OA eases them out of it, her smile softened, gently sad. All of this comes with regret: she can never go back, never absolve herself of the hurt she caused two people who did their best to love her, in spite of it all.]
It's big now.
[This, here, all of it.]
You'll learn to see true.