the way one animal trusts another [ bowie & izzy ]

the way one animal trusts another [ bowie & izzy ] Mar 11, 2022 19:46:40 GMT -5

Quote

Post by heather - d2 [mylee] on Mar 11, 2022 19:46:40 GMT -5

I S A B E L L A

There’s no part of me that doubts the direction I’ve steered the mech—I know there’s some sight to be seen of either Bowie, Isaac, or Kareem eventually, though I don’t feel the pitted urge in my stomach that finding them is something crucial. I should feel the ache of some loss, I’m sure, but I feel I’ve spent a lifetime of doing so, of anticipating that pain, and I find the lack of it now something pleasant. The thought to stop running crosses my mind and so I do, and that’s that, the shell around my body stalled out amongst the vines and brush.

[ Where she’s stopped, Izzy hears only the wind picking up, though she imagines Isaac’s—or is it Kareem’s?—voice carried on the gusts. Every thing alive, and some that are not, rustle and shift involuntarily, nature’s power evident if not overtaking. The creaking of the metal around her eventually becomes too much, the whole thing seemingly on the verge of losing the little surety Isaac had provided it with and instead giving up the ghost of whatever past life it had led to collapse in a heap whose center would be Izzy. So she does the one thing she’s established as consistent and hauls herself out onto the warm ground below, draped open across the earth like she’s trying to bridge a chasm opened wild and mean. ]

From here, I can uproot everything around me, disrupt the normalcy of whatever history this place has had. I pull snippets of grass and vine, leaves and twigs from the earth until the roots give way, the system branching long enough to brush the fine hairs covering my arm, and in looking up into the sun, I can imagine the plants’ thin veins merging with my own, body to body, bring me to the ground.

[ She hears Bowie long before she sees him, her eyes still following each root to its imagined end somewhere in the inner workings of herself. She says nothing to him when he approaches, but passes him a fistful of plants and waits for him to join her, flat-backed on the ground. ]

I stayed behind to make sure they were all dead, you know? When I turn to look at him, I see once more the boy I laid beside in the night—still traces of the ugly metal face linger against his skin, in his brow bone and jaw. I reach out with the hand I first extended to him, now empty and patient, and trace my finger along the skin under each eye, across the bridge of the nose. You’re not you when you’re inside that thing. None of you are.

[ table: pogue ]

[ isabella bataille picks stuff up; gives one bundle of medicinal plants to bowie ]