If you're still doing the small prompts: Mary + Lilith -> Shannon
“She’s not here, Mary!” Lilith’s yelling now, stumbling through the sand that whips against her cheeks, stings her lips, burns into the corners of her eyes. “She’s gone! Shannon is gone!”
She can hardly see Mary’s figure, stumbling forward only feet in front of her.
“Mary! Please!”
“She is here,” Mary grits out, words pushed back to Lilith by the wind. “We just gotta find her.”
“You know that’s not true.”
The dark blur of Mary shakes her head.
Lilith lunges, manages to snag the back of Mary’s shirt in her long reach. She pulls.
Mary turns, has to turn, to avoid toppling into the searing dunes. Her face contorts, her eyes creased against the pain and the grit. “What, Lilith!” She takes a step forward, hand finding her hip, but it finds no shotgun. “Quit stopping me and help me look!”
Lilith’s throat bobs. “She’s not– She’s gone.”
“You’re here,” Mary spits. She’s too dehydrated for tears—face peeling, lips cracked—but her voice grates like a rusty saw against bone. “You were dead, and you’re here. I was dead, and I’m here. Tell me why she wouldn’t fucking be here!”
Lilith says nothing. Lilith can’t say anything that Mary doesn’t already know.
Lilith can only stare at her, expression bludgeoned and splintered. They used to be three; then they were four; then they were five; now they are two. Shannon is gone.
(You called me heartless. Right now, she feels her heart so keenly, so inconveniently, when all that pain is meaningless beside Mary’s, that she wants to rip it out and grind it into the dust.)
“No,” Mary says, shaking her head. “No, Lilith, no.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Do not apologize!” Mary surges forward and tackles her, lands on top of her, desiccated but heavy, feverish, alive. She crushes Lilith’s lungs, digs her knee into the scaled shelf of her stomach, bares her teeth in her face. “You never say you’re sorry, so what the fuck makes you think you can apologize to me right now? Huh?”
Lilith meets her eyes, centimeters apart. She can feel the pant of Mary’s breath against her cheeks.
“Hit me,” Lilith croaks, impulsively. Hit me, punch me, bite my arm where it’s still skin until it bleeds. You’re alive. I’m alive. Don’t get up.
Mary’s face screws up. “What–?”
Lilith lets her head fall back against the blistering ground. Her grey-streaked bun bunches against the back of her neck. “You think I don’t want to find her? You think I don’t want to find Shannon?”
“Don’t,” Mary growls.
“She was my sister, Mary. She was your– She was Shannon.” In the aftermath of the Vatican, in the downtime after the warpath and the resurrection, Lilith has had to reckon with absence. Has had to look it in the eyes, freed of any trappings of glorious sacrifice or martyred cause.
It’s intolerable.
“But I found you. I found you. I failed you, at the Vatican, I wasn’t fast enough to take you back with us, but– But we can go back, now. To Camila, and Ava, and Beatrice. I’m sorry, but we have to go back.” Lilith was at her mother’s house today. Lilith wore her teenage clothes. It’s an even younger self she wears, now, as she says, “We lost Shannon. We can’t lose you.”
Mary’s shaking her head again. Her lips move like her tongue is desperately trying to wet itself against the roof of her mouth and finding no moisture. Finally, she stills. She looks at Lilith, her eyes dark and pained. “I really hate you,” she whispers.
“I know.”
Mary shifts her knees so they straddle Lilith’s hips. Her burning forehead falls to Lilith’s sternum.
Lilith freezes. She stares up at the yellow-orange sky.
“Thought I was gonna be alone here forever,” Mary whispers, cracking. “When I saw you, I thought….”
Stiltedly, Lilith moves, the way she learned by copying off Mary, off Shannon. She wraps her arms around Mary’s back. “I’ve got you,” she murmurs.
For seconds, minutes, years, she holds her.
“Promise me,” Mary says, finally. “Promise me we’re not leaving her behind.”
“I swear.”
She’s quiet for a long pause. “Then…. Alright. Let’s go back.” She takes a deep, rasping breath. “To Ava, and Camila, and Beatrice.”
Lilith nods. The air burns with smoke.
They fall, together, onto the floor of Jillian Salvius’s lab.
74 notes
·
View notes
Weekly Goal Setting #02
9.18.23
New week, new plans/goals!
It’s Week 38 of 2023. A very chaotic week ahead so this is very optimistic.
Studying Goals for the Week
Practice Writing 5x
Read some more of Metamorphoses by Ovid, translated by Stephanie McCarter (audiobook)
Enrichment Goals for the Week
Finish Grendel by John Gardner (audiobook)
Watch The Curse of Kazuo Umezu (1990)
Enjoy nature/sit outside in the grass somewhere
Eat something delicious!
Start another audiobook
Planning Goals of the Week
Weekly Set-up Ritual (Monday)
> Prepare the Hobonichi Weeks
> Review Work Schedule
> Review Enrichment/Life Maintenance Schedule
Weekly Reflection Ritual (Sunday)
> Go through and mark achieved goals in Hobonichi Weeks
> Reflect/Journal on what worked/what didn’t
Blog Maintenance
Make Weekly Goals Post
Make Weekly Wrap Up Post
Take some Aesthetic Images for Weekly Wrap Up Post
Work on a independant blog post for this Tumblr
Launch the manila-custard Instagram
4 notes
·
View notes