#and yes despite this being in chapter 7 agnes will take the majority of the book to admit she likes girls

[cream-and-tea]

LAY ME DOWN. chapter seven excerpt. unedited. featuring: agnes taking some time to explore her new surroundings and reflect on her old ones. blasphemy. implied homophobia. religious trauma. mild injury.

[Transcript under the cut]

hiiii! we’ve had pallas’s existential gender ponderings so it’s only fair that i post something that features much more heavily in the plot: Agnes And The Ongoing Sexuality Crisis! now go and listen to hallelujah (in your arms) by semler at least 50 times to accurately recreate the experience i had writing this chapter <3

TAGLIST (ask to be +/-). @vellichor-virgo​ @nicola-writes​ @doctormoss​ @gerbermatter​ @cactusprincewrites @houndmouthed @muddshadow @just-wublrful @midnights-melodiverse @corkywantstowrite @paradisiacalshroud @andromedatalksaboutstuff @kingsinking @lungs-and-gills @lychniscitrus @phantomnations

This isn’t the first time she’s dreamt of girls. 

Agnes considers that fact as she pulls everything out of the chest sitting at the foot of the bed (spare bedding mostly, sheets and quilts and pillowcases— multiple of each—and at least one heavy coat). They’ve never felt like that before though, clear and cold like water running over her skin, so obviously there. Most of the time she doesn’t even remember the other ones, just the feeling of them, waking up part ashamed and part euphoric (the euphoria always wore off long before the shame).

Agnes checks under the bed, then opens and closes the drawer on the end table, scoots it over to peer behind it, not really sure what she’s looking for. Secret passages maybe? Hidden traps? Something to let her know what the rules are here. 

There are, in her experience, at least three kind of rules in the world: the kind that people will tell you up front, the kind that they expect you to just know about and act surprised when you don’t, and the kind that they never say out loud but you can feel somewhere in your bones must be followed at all costs (We don’t talk about how Agnes sees ghosts and we don’t talk about how Agnes thinks about girls both fall into this category). Normally it takes her way too long to figure out which are which, she can’t afford to do that here where everything is already so confusing. 

Pallas would probably know all the rules, if she can find them, if they don’t make her brain explode when she does. Pallas had seemed to know everything about whatever this place is. What would they think of the girl in her dreams? They’re a weird and very sharp sort of person, she thinks, not really anything in particular at all. A why more than a what. If they weren’t definitely going to murder her if she looked at them wrong she would ask about that. 

There’s nothing in the desk but pencils, pens and a stack of notebooks. There’s nothing under the rug or behind the dresser filled with clothes that all look her size. The bookshelf is half full of titles she doesn’t recognize. She’s too weak to climb up to and push aside the strange painting of a human-faced deer full of arrows that hangs over the fireplace. When she limps her way to the bathroom the tub is still full and stagnant from when she filled it the night before but her clothes have mysteriously vanished from their crumpled pile on the floor. 

Agnes sways, then sits on the edge of the bathtub to appease her screaming ankle. She swings one leg into the water, hoping that will somehow help the pain, presses the heels of her hands into her eyes. “Okay. Okay okay okay.”

Things she knows: This is a library in a forest a long time after libraries stopped being something people thought about (her mother is dead). This library is supposedly full of people like her and people like Pallas (her Papá is gone). It’s going to teach her about what she is (her mother is dead). It’s not going to be easy (her mother is dead). She shouldn’t tell anyone her name (her mother is dead). The Library is supposed to save the world. (her Papá is gone). There are doors in trees that lead to tunnels that lead to here and things that look like dogs but aren’t and people that can bend blood and flesh and a Director who’s office sits in the void with a sword hanging above it in suspended animation (her Papá is gone and her mother is dead her Papá is gone and her mother is dead but somehow she is alive alive alive).

Things she doesn’t know: How exactly The Library is going to save the world. What The Library knows about the men in white. Where the men in white could have taken Papá. How these people can teach her about ghosts. How this place stands untouched in a forest that consumes everything around it. Why the girl in her dreams was asking her to find her. Whether or not there will be people her age here. Why the dogs and the Director and the librarian remind her of what the men in white did to her mother. Where her clothes went. If she’ll ever see Pallas again or if they’ve left her for good. If God hates her or not. Why there’s a sword in the Directors office. If there’s a place she can get food. If there’s any point to the deer painting or if it’s there just to creep her out. 

The closest thing they’d had to art on the walls back home was a wood-burned etching of the Virgin Mary that sat propped on a shelf above the kitchen table. Papá had made it for Mother for some anniversary and it really was very beautiful, dark line’s swirling across polished cedar. Her mother loved it and Agnes loved it too, there was something mesmerising about how the natural whorls and grain of the wood mixed with scratchy charcoal dark swirls. She’d liked the way the Mother of Gods eyes were ever so slightly downcast, as if she wanted to look at you but couldn’t quite bring herself to. Agnes could relate to that. And then one night when she was thirteen and everything seemed awful forever she’d gone to bed late after too little time spent with Mother and too much time wandering with the ghosts and dreamt that the carving had come alive. 

Mary had still been the colour of wood in the dream, but soft to the touch, human and wrapped in flowing fabric. Agnes had been standing barefoot and bareshouldered in the middle of the kitchen and Mary had knelt in front of her very very close and Agnes had used to clumsy hands to move the veil from her hair and the Blessed Virgin's hair had come loose around her face and she’d put her carvedgirl hands on either side of Agnes’s face. 

Then Mary had said nos diligimus, quoniam ipse prior dilexit nos and put her lips close to Agnes’s and Agnes had woken up screaming like someone had doused her with boiling oil. 

This, obviously, woke her parents, but she’d been too sick with horror and shame to lie so instead had sobbed out everything into Papá’s shoulder. Then Mother had begun to talk in the high and strung out way that there was something very, very wrong and Papá had sent her to sit on the steps outside in the gnawing February air where she’d pressed her hands to her ears and her snot-streaked face to her knees, trying to block out the sound inside while a dead woman and her barely-there son had pressed to either side of her, trying to be comforting but really only making her colder.

She felt about the same then as she does now, half-awake and shuddery and like she could make one wrong move and the world would collapse in screaming fire around her, well-worn prayers buoying in her heavy head, bits of wood carried along by a torrent of floodwater.

Oh Lord, what’s happening to me.

Oh Lord, why why why why why.