#hc_firewatch_au | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

quaranmine · 2 months

Text

The Incandescence of a Dying Light (Chapter Twelve; Final)

The after, and the end.

Chapter twelve: 7,050 words.

<< Chapter Eleven | Masterpost

Hi, thank you all so much for reading. I hope you like this chapter. I already know some of you will :)

No CW for this chapter. Trust me that I can’t do worse to you than the last chapter. This one will, of course, continue to reference events of the last chapter though so be prepared for more discussion of grief and death.

September 1989

It’s late afternoon when Grian walks down the trail, boots crunching softly on the leaves and gravel. His boots are rubbing his feet, despite the many miles he has walked this summer to break them in. He’s still wearing the old pair, battered and trashed as they are. It’ll be their last journey. It only feels right in the way it feels wrong. It’s like he’s slipping back into a part he played once that doesn’t quite fit anymore.

Still, the walking is meditative in its own way. One foot in front of the other, back and forth, every time.

He zones out so thoroughly that he’s almost, but not quite, surprised to realize he is already at his destination. He knows he’s at the end of the line because the last pitch is steep and rocky, with nothing but sky above him. There’s nowhere left to go but up, and reaching for the sky is what all fire lookouts do best.

Perhaps he expected this trail to be longer because the trail to Two Forks was. It took a full day of walking if he started incredibly early, and two days if he didn’t. He always seemed to fail to start early, except for that time with the firework idiots. This isn’t the trail to Two Forks, though.

Grian scrambles up the last portion of the trail, and sets his eyes on the prize at the end: the Thorofare lookout.

It’s not perched on a tower the way many classic lookouts are, rather it takes on a different blueprint that is common to many fire lookouts in the western US. It sits alone on top of a foundation of a heaping pile of granite rock. It doesn’t need a spiraling staircase to give it height above the trees; it’s already the highest point in the surrounding mountains.

For a random, silly moment, Grian wants to duck himself behind one of the rocks and hide. He wants to play spy for just a little while, and go back to being that unobtrusive observer in the forest that he was paid to be only weeks ago.

The lookout is fairly well kept. The siding has been painted recently, but the shingles are a little messed up, likely from the hail they’d received earlier in the summer. Grian smiles to himself, just slightly. That’s probably not something Scar can fix for himself, and it’s probably driving him crazy. He clearly cares a lot about keeping the building and its surroundings looking nice.

He should just…go to the door and knock, like a normal person.

He doesn’t. He just hangs back.

He’s not entirely sure why. Scar seems, by every encounter he’s ever had with him, an objectively friendly person. Perhaps even too friendly—a person who was willing to put up with Grian’s relentless, doomed quest and offer total support. And maybe that’s why he’s scared: because it’s always easier to reveal your whole soul anonymously, but putting a face to it is final.

He has to do this, though.

He rolls his shoulders, adjusting the weight of the pack—a new one—and anticipates dropping it at the door. Then, he steps out from behind the rock, walks to the door, and knocks on it.

There is an immediate yelp of shock from inside the cabin followed by the sound of something clearly being dropped, which Grian can’t help but snicker at.

“I’m uh, I’m—coming!” Scar says, with a hint of sing-song on the final word. Grian is struck by how clear his voice sounds, without the interference of many miles between them. Of course it would be, but still. He sounds just slightly different.

A second later the door is flung open, and Scar is there, right in front of him, leaning a little on the door frame. Standing there, right in front of him.

He’s taller than Grian, which he knew to expect but is still mildly annoyed by. He somehow looks nothing like, and exactly like, what Grian expected him to. His hair is light brown, and needs a good combing. It’s a little long in the back, since it’s probably been weeks or months since Scar got it trimmed. His eyes are green, and they contain just a touch of cockiness. He’s smiling at Grian, all bright teeth and good cheer, and the facial expression tugs slightly at a scar under his eye. That had been caused in the accident, if Grian recalls correctly.

“Well, hello there,” Scar says. “You startled me a little back there! We don’t get very many visitors to this fine establishment, but welcome! I’m the one who staffs this here Thorofare Lookout, so what can I help ya with?”

And Grian, embarrassingly, just stares at him.

The moment extends for an amount of time that is just edging into uncomfortableness. Grian can see it in the way Scar’s smile freezes a little on his face, like he’s gone from being genuinely friendly to just holding the expression in place for some weirdo tourist who has decided to come bother him out in the middle of nowhere.

Grian shakes his head, lifting himself out of the moment and back into reality. “Sorry,” he mutters quietly. “Sorry about that, I’m just—” He stops. Then, he extends his hand. “Hi Scar, I’m Grian.”

It’s Scar’s turn to stare now. The smile on his face melts away in shock, and his gaze flickers across Grian, giving him a once over. It makes Grian want to shrink back some in shyness.

Then he accepts Grian’s extended hand, and in one fluid motion uses it to yank him into a hug instead. It’s soft and warm.

Grian somehow didn't expect that, although he's probably received more hugs in the past two months than in the last two years, so this one shouldn't be that much of a surprise. It feels more important though, like it's communicating something left unsaid between them all summer.

"You had me so worried," Scar says to the top of Grian's head.

They pull away. Grian smiles sadly. "Sorry about that."

"What are you doing here?" Scar says.

“Ouch. Not even a hello?”

“Hi Grian,” Scar says, and immediately tacks on: “So what are you doing here? Not that—not that I don't appreciate it of course! You know, I just didn't expect—"

"I thought I'd come for a visit," he says. Then he adds, amused, "Can I come in?"

"Oh! Of course!"

Grian steps into the lookout, and it's organized chaos. He gets the distinct sense that Scar has too many belongings for such a small space, and that he has at the same time put great effort into decorating and turning it into a little home. The interior layout mostly matches his tower, with a few differences like the bed being in a different corner. There’s a notebook on the floor, which Scar quickly snatches and replaces it on the desk. That must have been what he dropped earlier when Grian knocked.

“Guess you weren’t expecting visitors?” he says.

Scar laughs. “No! You scared me!”

“Yeah, I was never expecting any hikers either,” Grian says. “I got visitors…just a few times? I think? And the one time I didn’t even see them coming, they just made it all the way up to the catwalk and knocked on the window.”

“Oh, that’s not even a bad one,” Scar says. “Once I had a hiker come in really late at night. So I just woke up to seeing a person literally trying to open the door in the dark. I thought I was gonna get robbed, or murdered, or—”

“Now I know how I should scare you next time,” Grian says, and Scar swats his arm.

“I think a lot of people don’t realize it’s inhabited,” Scar says. “Like, they think the cabin is empty so they get all the way up here and don’t realize someone’s there? I ended up letting that person crash on the floor in their sleeping bag. After I finished having a heart attack!”

“There aren’t many left that are still used, are there?” Grian asks.

Scar looks away a bit, eyes flitting over to the window by the desk where the mountains lay beyond, the ones he’s known for years. “Less each year,” he says. “I always wonder if each year’s my last one. Two Forks went inactive for several seasons. It’s just this year, after all those Yellowstone fires, that they hired more people. Like you!”

“But that funding won’t last.”

Scar shrugs. “They’ll forget about it again once the public forgets about it. Or once a new administration wants to do some cost-cutting and wonders why they’re paying so many people to go do nothing all day.”

Grian makes a noise of agreement. It goes without saying, of course, that the job isn’t only nothing. It’s a lot of nothing right up until sometimes it’s suddenly a lot of something. After that it’s hours of overtime, maps, math, weather, radio chatter, and monitoring fire.

It only took the briefest introduction to the job for Grian to realize it was like stepping into another world, and not one that would last for much longer. Manned lookouts would continue to have some advantages, of course. He and Scar could be a 24/7 relay to firefighters if needed. The job may not ever fully go away. But the more that things like satellites could be relied on, the less people they’d need to cover these vast networks of forest.

The wind whistles outside of the windows as they stand there. The sun’s angle throws little warm squares of light through the windows, checkering the floor of the cabin. It’s later in the year now, and the days are getting shorter. It’s still warm out during the day, but the lows at night are starting to get below freezing again. Scar won’t be asked to come back after October 1st, unless a really large fire breaks out again. There’s limited days left in this cabin.

The strangest part of it all is that they’re standing here together. He keeps throwing stray glances at Scar, hoping he won’t notice, as if he’s trying to verify that he’s really standing there.

Grian changes the subject slightly. “Do you have room for me to sleep tonight? Or is that offer only open to potential thieves in the night?”

Scar pretends to deliberate on this for a second. “Nah, I’m gonna make you sleep in a tent. On the rocks. In the wind! And the cold!”

“Rude,” Grian says. “Is this how you always treat your fri—guests?”

He backs out of the word at the last minute. It’s silly. Part of him wonders, though, if he messed up his chance with Scar. If he was too hurtful, or weird, or difficult to deal with. If it was easier to talk with him long-distance and not worth it face-to-face.

It doesn’t escape Scar’s notice. “Well,” he says, drawing the word out. “I guess I could make an exception for making sure a friend doesn’t freeze to death.”

“How could I ever expect to live up to that kind of hospitality,” he deadpans in return, matching Scar’s sarcasm even as tension trickles out of his shoulders.

They were both joking, of course, but Grian had packed his bag with everything he needed in case he got rejected. He’d been willing to sleep outside. Jimmy told him that was stupid, because there was no way Scar wouldn’t let him stay with him. Grian told him that may be true, but he was never going to set out on a hiking trail again without all his gear regardless. Jimmy got quiet after that and agreed.

“Maybe I’ll just make you do some chores,” Scar says. “Hey, I have an extra pair of binoculars—”

And like that, the ice is broken.

»»———-　　———-««

Hours later, it’s dark out.

They spend a pleasant afternoon and evening together, talking mostly about nothing at all. Intentionally talking about nothing at all, really. Grian guides them away each time the conversation turns, and Scar lets him like he doesn’t even notice.

Scar is an even better storyteller in person—for the first time, Grian’s able to see how he stops what he’s doing to pour every ounce of attention into his words. Scar fills him in on everything that’s happened since July.

“You know it’s a lot more boring without you, you know,” Scar says. “The replacement lookout didn’t dramatically steal anything? Jump out any windows?” “Not a single one, G-man!” he cries. “I mean really, how’s a man supposed to find any other entertainment out here? Nice lady, though. But she didn’t want to talk to me, she just told me she wanted to do her job. I think our supervisor might have warned her off me.” “You’re a bad influence,” Grian says. “I don’t blame her.” “I’ll have you know, I was rated Most Wholesome in high school.” “That did not happen. I don’t even think that’s even a real thing.”

He receives a mini tour of the lookout. It’s not a long tour because there isn’t much to see, but Grian pays rapt attention anyway. Scar tells him about his efforts to paint the siding earlier in the summer, and specifically the way someone had come specially to deliver him those supplies twice because it was the wrong product the first time.

He points out landmarks through the windows, and Grian gets to see some of the same mountains he spent so long watching from a new vantage point. He looks at the sunny south faces of all the mountains that were north of Two Forks tower.

There’s another new feature in the cabin that Scar has added, in the form of a high shelf above the windows and close to the ceiling.

“I built that so I could dry paintings without Jellie stepping all over them when they were wet,” Scar tells him after he catches Grian eyeing it. “How’d that work out for you?” he asks. “It’s the only place she wants to sleep now!” Scar groans. "Cats like high places, you know. Wait, is she around here? I haven’t seen her at all! I'd like to meet her." "I knew you'd be more excited to see my cat than me," Scar mutters. “She’s probably hiding under the bed.” Grian kneels on the floor and peers under the bed. Deep in the shadows in the corner, a pair of bright eyes look back at him, regarding him with suspicion. Her eyes are the same color as Scar's. He watches her for a moment, but she does not make any effort to come closer. He silently vows that he will manage to pet her before he leaves.

Scar also gives him a short demonstration of some of the paintings he’s made this year. He has a sketchbook full of little things—the trees further down the hill, an undulating column of smoke with all its curves, and a delightful series of cat sketches. There are some pages where Scar skips past quickly and refuses to show Grian. When he catches a glimpse of one, the drawings look just as good as the others, so Grian remains unsure what exactly was wrong with them.

Just as impressive are his oils and watercolors. He’s made a bunch this summer—Scar claims it’s actually bad because he’s done less than usual, which Grian can’t really comprehend—and most of them are small studies.

“I want to capture more movement and texture and color and life,” Scar tells him. “The smaller pieces of paper make it so that I can’t get too hung up on details!” Grian nods along. “The Impressionists did that, you know,” Scar starts, and Grian gratefully settles back in to listen to another tangent while he thumbs through little brightly painted cards, each one more impressive than the last.

Now it’s getting late, and they’re sitting out on the catwalk together, backs against the cabin. There’s a very cold bite to the air, but the stars are pretty regardless. No clouds at all tonight, in fact, and a waning moon shining gently. The lights in the lookout are turned off, and as his eyes adjust he can start to see the outlines of the distant mountains.

Grian has two cans of beer he picked up at a gas station somewhere along the way, and gives one to Scar. It’s not a brand he recognizes, so maybe it’s from some local or state-specific brewery. Scar brings a blanket out on the deck for each of them. The cold air seeps up between the cracks in the boards they’re sitting on, but he’s cozy nonetheless.

“I wish you could’ve been down here back when the meteor shower was going,” Scar says.

“Meteor shower?” he asks.

“Yeah. It’s, uh, I don’t know. Every year at the end of summer. It’s nice to be out here ‘cause you can see so many stars at night.”

“I bet that was nice,” Grian says. “I wish I was there.”

They lapse into silence for a few minutes, just sipping on the drinks. The stars twinkle far above him, the furthest so faint that he can hardly tell if he’s really seeing them or not. He absently wishes he learned more constellations, since he can’t recognize any right now. He’s going to miss being able to see so many stars.

When he turns to face Scar again, his expression is stormy. Grian goes still. Scar fiddles with the edge of his blanket and doesn’t meet his eye. He can’t tell if he looks angry, or just upset, but either combination of those makes his stomach turn. Grian waits though. They’ve waited long enough today.

"After all…of that," Scar starts finally, neatly sidestepping any discussion of what all of that actually was, "I didn't hear from you again. At all."

Grian lets that settle in for a moment. "I know," he responds finally. "I’m sorry. That's why I came here."

"I mean," Scar continues, voice growing stronger, "I knew you weren't dead because it was all over the radio traffic. I was monitoring the communications with the hotshot crew. I hear about—” he gestures with his hand “—all that, with the fire and helicopter. And our supervisor took pity on me and told me some of the details afterward.”

“And it was on the news.”

Grian knows the story was run on a few American and British outlets. He avoided the TV, and the paper, for a while afterward, but it doesn’t take the press long to get bored. Mumbo’s death was barely a blip in the news cycle. It was a dramatic story, but not that dramatic. It doesn’t matter if it will haunt Grian for the rest of his life; the average person wouldn’t remember reading about it after a week. “Missing British Expat Found Dead in American Wilderness One Year Later.” He grimaces even at the mere thought of it.

“That too. Not that I get much of that up here.” His voice is clipped. Hurt. With good reason, really, but—

Truthfully, Grian didn’t quite think to contact Scar until later. Everything after he was evacuated from the forest was a blur of activity that made his head spin, and he wasn’t in the best of shape at the time. The helicopter had taken him directly to the hospital in town, and they’d kept him for three days. They evaluated his ankle, which was only a grade 1 sprain that had been aggravated by his constant movement. They treated him for severe dehydration. They evaluated his lungs and airways. Mostly, though, they focused on his burns.

Grian was lucky, all things considered, regardless of if he felt that way or not. He lived when he could have very easily died. He’d been in a rocky area that burned fast and had little tinder, with the boulder next to him to act as a heat sink. He’d been stuck in a finger of the fire near the edge, so it had burned over quickly. He hadn't ever caught on fire himself. He’d kept his nose and mouth protected and close to the ground. His clothing had protected most of his body, but wearing a t-shirt meant his arms had been bare and he’d used his hands to cover his head. They fared the worst.

Grian thought the hand was perhaps the most annoying place to receive a burn, with the painful way he struggled to do anything, especially writing, for a few weeks. But it hadn’t been very severe. It could have been worse. He got to go home, and monitor his recovery from there.

He answered a million questions over the days following the incident. He spoke to rangers, search and rescue, fire crew members, and the police. He was scolded for stealing documents, but the words held little bite or legal weight. They had other copies available, after all. They asked him to pay a small fine. The rangers’ eyes looked sympathetic. Perhaps they felt he suffered enough, or perhaps it was the fact that this confrontation took place in the hospital room.

He called Mumbo’s parents again the morning after he woke up again.

And then when he sat in the hospital on the second night, waiting for Mumbo’s parents and his own mum to arrive, he pulled out his radio again and charged it. Once it came back on though, he realized it couldn’t do anything for him anymore. It was still set to the frequency he and Scar always spoke on, but now there were new voices speaking on it.

Of course they didn’t own the frequency, it was just a national talk frequency. They’d always just carved privacy out of the sheer remoteness surrounding them. Now, he was simply too far out of that limited range and was picking up more nearby conversations instead.

“I’m sorry,” Grian says. “I didn’t have a radio to reach you with. It was out of range as soon as I left the forest.”

“I have a phone.”

“I didn’t know the number,” he says after a moment. They’d only ever spoken over the radio when he was a lookout. Then, he tacks on jokingly: “I also don’t really think the agency wants to foot the bill for international calls.”

Scar scrunches his eyes shut for just a moment. “It hurt a lot,” he says. “That day—when I think of it, it’s so….I just—I was just worried about you. I was…”

“Scared?” Grian offers.

Scar nods, and Grian feels something horrible wash over him, a guilt that makes him want to walk straight off the catwalk into the dark. He tries to place himself there for a moment, on that evening, but this time from the inside of this lookout. Scar could see the fire from his tower. He’d been desperately trying to save him with no way to interfere on his own. Helpless. He listened to Grian say things. Worrying things. He saw the fire’s movement, where it spread, and how fast it spread.

When Grian’s radio died, he must have felt like he was watching him die.

“It’s okay,” he says, speaking all in a rush. “It’s okay, I—I’m fine. See? I got out of there, and now I’m here. I’m sorry, I came to say I’m sorry. I’m okay.”

Scar tilts his head skeptically. “Are you? Because…”

Suddenly, Grian’s eyes well up with tears. The mere question is enough to crack his veneer of coping. He casts his eyes away and blinks fast, trying to keep them at bay. Scar has heard him cry, but never seen him cry, which is somehow more embarrassing.

“No,” he says. “I don’t think I really am.”

Scar doesn’t ask him any questions, he just puts his arm around him. The warm weight of it grounds him like a comfort. For every time Grian was convinced he could do it all by himself, there was another time that he just wanted it to be like this: a person who cares. He ducks his head down, and lets the tears drip across his cheeks and into his lap. He isn’t sobbing; it’s a quiet cry.

Eventually, he simply whispers, “I’m just so tired.”

“I get that,” Scar agrees.

“Everything’s just…too much,” he says. “I’m—”

One step from losing it all?

One missed breath from drowning?

“It just feels like the beginning again,” he finishes instead.

“The beginning?” Scar inquires.

“Like I haven’t figured it out. But last time I had hope, I guess. I thought it could be fixed. It hurt but I thought it could still work out in the end. I need it to work out and be okay. And now it can’t. It’s not ever going to be okay. And I don’t know what to do with that.”

There are lows Grian has felt in the last few weeks that he doesn’t want to share with anyone. That’s part of the problem, though. His life is everyone’s concern now and he’s being treated like glass by all his friends. They mean well, of course. They may even be wise for it. But people know what happened. They just can’t know how it felt.

He tries to remember they’re upset too. They’re also grieving. But they’re not the ones who have to leave the kitchen in a panic for a bit of fresh air whenever something burns in the oven.

He wants nothing more than to be left alone. He knows what it’s like to be alone after this year, and it’s familiar. And yet, he also wants nothing more than this—to be hugged, and comforted, by someone else who can do a little reasoning for him.

It’s hard to feel like anything matters right now. He dedicated all his time to finding Mumbo. He shaped his ideas, his time, and his relationships with people around the belief that Mumbo was alive—and was wrong. So what’s the point? Where’s he supposed to go now? What’s he supposed to do?

He doesn’t know.

Scar hugs him a little closer. “It’s not okay. It won’t be. But maybe eventually you’ll start filling in things around it.”

“Like you did?” Grian says, a little sharper than intended. “Isolating yourself for years in the middle of nowhere? That didn’t work for me, in case you didn’t notice.”

“No,” he responds slowly, “like I did by being reminded of the good memories, picking up art, getting a cat, trying new jobs, looking at pretty sunsets, and meeting new friends. See! Small steps first.” He lets go of Grian, and pats his shoulder. “You can do it.”

“I don’t want to do that,” Grian says.

“I kind of think you do.”

“I don’t though,” he says sourly, “because I—I already do, and I hate it. Sometimes I feel relieved. And I don’t want to. I don’t want to be relieved. My friend is dead.”

“Why’re you relieved?” Scar asks.

“Because—because it’s just. Over, maybe. Because I finally know the answers. Because it’s horrible but at least I don’t have to wonder anymore.”

The what-ifs used to plague him constantly. They were an ever-changing carousel of worst case scenarios that danced around his head. Now, something different plagues him. But the truth doesn’t change. It just is.

“Hm.” Scar pauses for a second. “Well, you figured out what happened. You found him. You can put it to rest now. It’s okay to do that.”

“But—”

Scar interrupts. “You’re not forgetting him, you know? That’s not what it means to move on. There’s a lot of people out there who don’t have anyone to believe in them. Mumbo had you. And you did good.”

And Grian doesn’t know what to say to that, so he doesn’t. He just sits there and lets the thought swirl around and around his head. Scar lets him. The two don’t speak.

He did good. Did he?

It doesn’t feel good. It doesn’t feel good to be hell-bent on saving your best friend only to find his body. It doesn’t feel good to fail so thoroughly from the goal you set. It doesn’t feel good to be the only one left in something that was special. He has so many memories with Mumbo. Now he’s their sole keeper, the only one left to carry that knowledge.

But he did succeed, in a way. Mumbo might have been lost forever out there. Some people never do get found. He brought Mumbo home, back to his family, and back to a place with respect. Where he could be buried.

He breaks it down in his mind, over and over, like maybe he can polish away all the sharp edges like a rock in the river. Maybe it’s okay to let the sharp edges go away. The heavy weight of it remains. Maybe it doesn’t have to cut his hands every time, though.

Eventually he takes a deep breath and sits back up.

“Sorry about all that,” he mutters, as he hastily wipes the tears from his eyes.

“No,” Scar says.

“No?”

“Don’t say that, don’t apologize for crying. It’s okay!” Scar says. “If anything, I’m sorry I didn’t help you more back then, or—”

“No,” Grian says this time.

“Oh,” Scar says. “No?”

“No,” he repeats.

“Okay.”

“So that’s out of the way, then,” Grian says, breaking into a watery half smile. “No more apologies.”

“I guess so,” Scar says.

Grian sighs. “I just don’t know what to do now. What do I do next? You…you managed to do it.”

Finding Mumbo was a year-long priority. Without it, he can’t seem to figure out the structure of his life. He never thought this far ahead. He only thought about what it would be like when it was all okay—not about what he planned to do when it wasn’t okay. Now he’s falling through his own cracks.

“That’s an easy one,” Scar says. “You’ve got a lot of houses to draw!”

“We call it drafting.”

“Drafting then,” Scar nods. “Go forth and draft some buildings.”

Grian tips his head back, looking at the stars. “I don’t know if I want to do that anymore.”

“Oh! You don’t have to,” Scar says. “I know you liked the job, but you don’t have to go back to it. You can do something else too. You can do whatever. Or even nothing.”

“I don’t want to do anything else, that’s the problem,” Grian says. “I just—ugh.”

He still likes architecture. He literally can’t turn it off in his brain, the way his eyes catch on the details of buildings when he travels past them, equal in praise and criticism for it. He doesn’t know if he has a place in that career anymore, though. Maybe he can’t do it anymore. Maybe he doesn’t remember how.

“You have time to figure it out. You even have the rest of your life to keep trying things out!” Scar says. “Why do you think I’m always seeing new places and doing these seasonal jobs? And if you want to go back to it you can. It doesn’t have to be now though. It can be whenever.”

For the first time in a long time, Grian feels a little spark of something about his future. It’s a little flame and it will need to be nurtured. He cups it close in his mind, trying to peer through its light. There’s no plan, just a glimmer of something that doesn’t sound too bad.

Every time he thinks about what to do next, he’s locked in decision paralysis. Mostly, he just wants to sleep and not have to deal with it. He has already tried that method, and while it doesn’t work well, it does eliminate the thoughts temporarily. The nothingness is comforting, even though he never feels better afterward. He wants this to all go away, but day after day since Mumbo first went missing that has been proven impossible.

But sometimes one of his friends comes along to drag him out of his room and onto the streets of London, and more times than not he finds himself enjoying it. He finds himself, even for just a moment, living in that reality instead. Is it so bad, to want that a little?

Like it always does, the guilt comes stalking back in behind the thought. He lived, Mumbo did not. Mumbo deserved to live. Grian did nothing spectacular, nothing out of the ordinary, to deserve to have this life that was robbed from his friend. It eats at him, cutting holes in the very fabric of his being. He lets the thought settle in the corner of his mind, like he always does, but he doesn’t dismiss the hope either. Not this time. He holds them both at once.

Then, his thoughts are interrupted by gentle, tentative paw steps on the edge of the blanket.

“Oh my goodness,” Scar says. “Jellie finally decided to come say hi!”

Grian watches her carefully from the corner of his eye, and dares not move an inch. Scar had left the door cracked when they came out here on the catwalk, so Jellie must have decided to explore a little. And now she’s slowly crawling over toward him. She’s a classic gray tabby cat with a white chest, paws, and blaze. She sniffs Grian’s hand with great contemplation, before carefully stepping over his arm and sitting on his lap.

“Oh!” he exclaims softly.

Scar silently fist-bumps the air. “Yes!” he says. “She likes you! I knew she would!”

“Can I pet her?”

“Of course,” Scar says. “That’s why she’s on your lap! Don’t worry, you’ll figure it out if she doesn’t want to be pet anymore.”

“By biting me, I’m sure.”

“Uh,” he says, “no comment.”

Grian gently strokes the striped fur along her back. It’s soft and short. It’s been a while since he owned his own cat, but he likes them. He wanted to get one, but their apartment in Denver hadn’t allowed animals, so the last cat he had was one back in England that passed away while he was in university. Maybe he’ll get a new cat when he goes back. Jellie is a dignified cat, the type of animal who looks at you and possesses an uncanny type of intelligence in their eyes. He honestly feels honored that she decided she liked him enough to sleep on his lap.

After a moment, she starts to purr.

Scar is watching the two of them with a funny look on his face. Or rather, after a moment, Grian realizes that Scar is actually watching his hands.

“You got burned,” he says, like he’s only just now noticing it.

His hands still. The second-degree burns had already healed in the weeks since the fire, but the skin on the back of his hand was still pink and patchy-looking. Healed, but only just, with the potential of any long-term scarring still up in the air. Jellie senses that he’s stopped petting her, and moves her head to push his hand until he resumes the motion. He does. Demanding cat.

“Yeah,” Grian responds simply.

Scar puts his head in his hands. “I should have directed you better—if I knew better, or—then maybe you wouldn’t have gotten hurt—”

“Hey, no,” Grian says. “That was…that was all me, Scar. I got into that situation myself. I was…I probably would have stayed put if it weren’t for you, honestly. You saved me.”

Scar looks up again. “Really?” he asks.

“I wouldn’t have got out of there,” he says softly. “And, really, I would have never found Mumbo if it weren’t for your help. Thank you for that. I know I…got mad at you, that day, but really. I, uh, do mean it. Thank you.”

“Oh,” Scar says. “That was—something I couldn’t imagine not doing.” He’s quiet for a moment, thinking. Grian for once can see this in the expression on his face, rather than the silence through the radio. He waits. Finally Scar asks: “Did they—did they ever find out what happened?”

That’s the big question, isn’t it? That’s been the big question this whole time. And for all the effort that Grian went to in order to find Mumbo, it wasn’t one he could fully answer on his own. That was for the rangers and the medical examiner.

He begins, “They found him, based on your map skills I’m sure. Um, recovered his body. Made a real identification. Not that I—not that I was going to be wrong. I just knew. They used dental records I think.”

He keeps petting Jellie.

“They don’t just—they don’t just send him home right away. They had to figure out what happened first. For his death certificate. Or maybe their records. Or maybe for us. But they did an autopsy—which was part of the identification I think.”

“What’d it say?” Scar asks.

It’s a long moment before Grian responds. “He probably died of dehydration. Which meant it probably only took a few days. They don’t think he had any water on him. They think maybe he’d been headed to the creek—” like I was, but he doesn’t say it. He continues. “He had a fracture in his leg. They think that’s why he was stuck there.”

“Awful,” Scar says softly.

“He was probably dead before the first week of the search was done.” Grian shakes his head sharply to dispel the thought. “Anyway, uh. They flew him back to England. We buried him. Had a funeral. It was really nice, actually.”

There was just so much happening at the funeral that it’s a blur in his mind. He was still receiving treatment for his burns and had everything wrapped. He was still having trouble sleeping. He felt like a shell of a fake person being forced to interact with the real people. The funeral was wonderful, affirming, and full of people he hadn’t seen in years. People who’d loved Mumbo, too. But it was also deeply overwhelming.

“You were in England this whole time then?” Scar says. “‘Cause you said something about international calls earlier.”

Grian nods. “Yeah. I went back a week after all of it happened. Stayed there, with my family.”

“But you came back here.”

“I had to,” he says, trying to force some brightness into his words. “Couldn’t just leave you all alone without saying goodbye.”

Scar reaches out a hand, and scratches Jellie under the chin. She purrs harder. He says, “Why’s it have to be goodbye?”

“Scar.”

“I know,” he says miserably. “I know.”

This isn’t his home, and it especially isn’t without Mumbo. Grian had followed him here, and now that he was gone, there wasn’t any reason to stay. Well—not a good reason. He’d be lying if he said this wasn’t breaking his heart too.

“I have things I have to wrap up here,” Grian says. “Stuff like our apartment. Those things need to be packed up and shipped back. And I need to sell my car. It’s all tedious stuff. Two of my other friends came with me to help me so I didn’t have to do it all by myself.”

“Your friends came? And you didn’t bring them to meet me?” Scar says in an exaggeratedly scandalized tone.

Grian smiles a little, and looks over at Scar. “It was private.”

He’d left Jimmy and Martyn in a cabin just outside of town. They’d been gracious enough to allow him to take a detour on their trip just to come here. None of his friends were very keen on questioning him these past few weeks. Sometimes he hated it, and wished they just treated him normally. Other times he was grateful they spared him any need to explain.

Then, he abruptly remembers. “Wait,” he says. “I had something for you. I would get it but…” He gestures at Jellie, who is not planning on letting him stand up any time soon.

“You’re cat-trapped,” Scar says. “Where is it?”

“The outer pocket of my bag. It’s a piece of paper.” Then he adds, “Don’t look at it until you get back out here!”

Scar steps gently over Grian, and disappears into the lookout for a moment. It’s dark and silent outside, except for the constant purr from Jellie that seems to radiate through his body. Then, just as fast, Scar is back and settling back down onto the catwalk boards. In his hand is a battered piece of yellow lined paper, singed on one edge.

“You can unfold it now,” Grian says, and Scar does.

He has to squint to appreciate it in the dim moonlight, but once he sees it recognition snaps across his face like lightning.

“This is my lookout,” Scar says, and then turns to look at Grian with wide eyes. “Wait, you actually drew it when I said so.”

Grian’s face heats up, and he glances away. “I…thought that maybe you should have it. As a thank you.”

“I love it,” Scar says. “It looks amazing.”

“Sorry it isn’t in better condition,” he says. “It was in my bag that got left behind. The rangers retrieved it along with…they mailed the stuff they found back to me, afterward. So I brought it here to you.”

“I think it’s in perfect condition,” Scar says. “It makes it real.” Then, he beams. “I’m going to hang this in the cabin. Frame it, maybe.”

Grian groans. “It isn’t that good,” he says.

“It should be on display!”

“Please, no,” Grian says.

“I guess you’ll just have to come again next year so I can prove you wrong. You won’t know what hit you when you see how good this looks framed,” Scar declares. Then he adds, softer. “You can come again, you know. You can always come back.”

“I’ll come back. I hope so,” Grian says. “After all, I’ve got the rest of my life to do it.”

»»———-　　———-««

Grian leaves the lookout the next morning, a little before midday. The day is bright and sunny and cloudless. In his bag are two new items: a pair of rolled up mini paintings, and Scar’s contact information penciled on a piece of paper.

He walks forward, one foot in front of the other, just like always.

<< Chapter Eleven | Masterpost

#grian #goodtimeswithscar #hermitcraft #hermitcraft fanfic #hermitcraft au #quara fanfic #hc_firewatch_au #SOBS AS I POST THE LAST CHAPTER ;-; ily guys

37 notes · View notes

honeylashofficial · 1 month

Text

Like Embers | an Imp and Skizz Oneshot

Firewatch AU - original story by @quaranmine

Skizz Week Prompt #2: Hybrid / AU (@skizzlemanweek)

Fire and friendship are not as incomparable as one may think. It's insistent, it's beautiful, and it marks you for life, whether you care to acknowledge it or not. In the way that unconditional love leaves scorch-marks across ones heart; like how embers remain, rekindle, and remind us of the raw power we possess between our very own fingertips. When wielded wisely, nothing compares.

Hurt / comfort, fluff, more fluff, unspecified injury (but no blood :D)

–+– 3,228 words –+–

November 14th, 1989

“Come on, we could totally make it happen.”

“Seriously, I’m telling you. It will not work.”

“You worried about the equipment?”

“Yes!”

“You’re just no fun.” Skizz paused in the dust, taking his time to lean backwards in a satisfying stretch. He sighed contentedly as the base of his spine popped, loosening again. His keychain of keys jangled in his hoodie pocket.

Beside him, Impulse released his own sigh, shaking his head in finality. “It’s not like they’ll want the footage anyways. There’s gonna be way too much background noise. You’d barely even hear us.”

“What if that’s the intrigue though,” Skizz pointed out, walking onward once more. “The Imp and Skizz radio segment, Forest Edition! I think I’m really on to something here.”

“I think you’re on something,” Impulse muttered, matching him step for step.

“Never. Tis simply my nature to explore the world on a more finite level,” Skizz defended himself curtly, dramatic English accent and all.

The forest crowded in on all sides of their path, silently encouraging them to hush and enjoy the nature around them. But being quiet was something neither of the two men had ever been good at, even from young ages. And it only got worse when they were in the same room. Or, in this case, in the same forest. It was a brisk late morning up in the mountains as they followed a well-trodden path towards a supposed lake. They hadn’t caught sight of it quite yet, but they’d been informed by a ranger a day ago that this was the perfect time to go and see it. Admittedly, Impulse was not nearly as enthralled about this whole hiking business as Skizz was. They were doing it together though, and Skizz had also promised to cook meals for the next two weeks once they got back to the duplex. His skills with a pan had finally convinced Impulse to agree on the weekend trip.

“Alright Shakespeare. Then maybe you could finally explore Dead Poet Society so we can get that out of the way?”

Skizz made a face at the comment, wrinkling up his nose in disgust. “They still want us to do that?”

“It’s extremely popular with the kiddies, says the studio,” Impulse shrugged.

Skizz shot him a look.

“Okay, fine,” Impulse hunched slightly, shoving his hands in his jean pockets. “I really want to do it still. Did you at least read some of the book?”

“No,” Skizz shook his head. A fraction of guilt poked at his innards upon the look his friend returned. He sidestepped a fallen branch on the path before putting his own hands in his hoodie pocket. “I told you already. I don’t read.”

“You’re missing out, man,” Impulse insisted quietly.

“What if I just go watch it and say I did?” Skizz countered smartly. Even as he said it, he knew what the response would be.

“No,” Impulse declared shortly. “I would know.”

Skizz smirked, grinning at him the way only he was allowed to. “Because?” He prodded annoyingly.

Impulse glared despite no heat radiating from the look. He pursed his lips, refusing to say it.

“Say it!” Skizz encouraged. There was a taunt in his voice, but it was a part of a language only they spoke. It was an undertone only distinguishable over years and years of growing familiar with one another. And it frequently rolled off both of their tongues in a familial way. Neither of them knew what they would do if that sweet playful banter were to cease.

Impulse averted his gaze, refusing to satisfy Skizz. It was a joke at this point, and one that Impulse played often. It never got old though, and Skizz never grew tired of it. If anything, he’d only gotten more persistent over the years.

“Say it!”

“Because you’re my best friend.”

“Now that’s what I like to- woah!”

The solid terrain disappeared from under Skizz’s feet. His eyes darted back to the path ahead, only to find that he’d misjudged it entirely. The path turned sharply, leading way to steep forest hills and rocky shelves. He gasped as he found no form of grip beneath his body, sinking into the angle and getting tossed head over heels. The world spun dizzyingly out of control as his weight was thrown into the ground over and over again. Blurry smears of color skidded past him before with a jolt, everything stopped at once.

There were stars at the edge of Skizz’s vision. He blinked slowly, trying to bring them into focus. There were parts of his body that ached and some parts that he couldn’t feel at all. If he concentrated really hard, he could manage to hear something beyond the ringing that filled his ears. Impulse was shouting his name distantly. How far down had he fallen? Should he get up, or wait for his buddy?

A minute or so later, his ears began to settle again. The sounds of trees and wind welcomed him back, and the fog in his head lifted just a tad. He needed to get up. He needed to get back to Impulse —get back to the designated path. But something heavy was laying on top of him… He lifted his head to see what it was, but nothing greeted his gaze.

“Skizz! Stupid bra- Skizz! Where are you?”

The voice was getting louder. Skizz could hear his friend pushing recklessly through the underbrush. There was sliding and skidding mixed with half hearted curses before another holler split the air. His tone was unmasked; betraying exactly what he felt. And a part of Skizz couldn’t help but find it endearing.

“I’m here,” he responded, pulling his elbows underneath him in order to push upward. As soon as he did though, a bolt of lightning rocketed through his backside. He just barely composed his tongue, dropping into the dirt again and holding back a pained yelp. Teeth gritted, he muttered furiously under his breath. “Great. Just great.”

Impulse appeared a moment later, his cheeks bright red with windburn. He took deep gulps of air as if he’d been the one rolled down a hill. Upon catching sight of Skizz, he ran forward to crouch down at his side. “You okay?” He wheezed.

“No, I don’t think so,” Skizz admitted, trying not to think about all the things that could currently be wrong with his backside. Pain had bloomed about three quarters of the way down his spine, threatening with another burst if he moved the wrong way. “I think something happened to my back.”

“Uh, Skizz? If you haven’t noticed, something definitely happened,” Impulse slowly slid his backpack from his shoulders. “You fell down a hill for goodness sake. Thank God for this tree here.”

Skizz grimaced, squeezing his eyes shut. “That’s probably what got me.” He didn’t know what to do now. He was stuck, lying here on his stomach with who knew how serious of an injury. Not to mention, they had to be at least 30 feet from the trail with no guide to point them in the right direction. Why had they even come out here? Why didn’t he just stay put like Impulse had encouraged him to during their precious days off?

“Do you wanna sit up at least, or… how bad is it?” Impulse leaned over, trying to make eye contact at this awkward angle. “Do I need to call for help?”

“No, no,” Skizz raised his head, albeit slowly, so as not to disturb the muscles along his spine. “Gimme a minute or two. It might just be shock.”

“You went down pretty hard,” Impulse murmured before attempting to add more lightly, “And I refuse to carry you bridal style anywhere, just so we’re on the same page.”

An involuntary smile crawled onto Skizz’s face. “Aw… and here I thought Dipple-dop was my knight in shining armor.”

Impulse blew a raspberry, rolling his eyes as he sat heavily in the leaf litter. “I’m just one guy, Skizz. A guy that’s trying to keep you alive-“

Skizz flinched. He didn’t know whether it was because of the statement or the pain.

“-and I just feel pretty terrible at my job right now. So what do you need? Water? Pain meds..? I think I have one or two of something somewhere.”

Skizz knew Impulse. He was in need of a task. Something to keep him preoccupied while the situation outcome was unknown. He was outwardly scared on Skizz’s behalf. And Skizz simply couldn’t ask for a greater friend. “Water sounds great right about now.”

Impulse nodded, opening his bag and digging around inside. After a moment, he brought out a clear bottle, handing it over. Only then did Skizz realize that his hands were trembling with nerves.

“Buddy,” he began, taking the water and unscrewing the cap. “You gotta relax. I’m not dying.”

“I- I know that,” Impulse retorted, looking away. Skizz sighed faintly.

“Look at me.”

Dark brown eyes sheepishly met his.

“What do I always say?”

Impulse groaned, gaze sliding past his ear.

“There are times when you can play it safe, and there are times to be reckless.”

“What are you getting at, Skizz?”

“Look at me?”

Impulse’s gaze returned, slightly harder this time. “What?”

“There’s a third option. It’s not an option though. It’s happenstance. And we just happened to run into it today, alright?”

Confusion swam behind Impulse’s eyes, but it was obvious his patience on the matter had run raggedly thin. He scowled at Skizz. “Would you just tell me what needs to happen man? I don’t need your cryptic-“

“Alright, alright,” Skizz lifted a hand, patting the air calmly. “Just…” He let out a slow breath, hoping that it would negate the throbbing pain somehow. “Just give me another minute or so. I’ll see if I can get up then.”

It still felt as if a heavy object had weighed Skizz’s lower backside to the ground. He couldn’t help but wonder why that was. His legs tingled faintly, weak, and he could tell his jeans had holes in them now. What would his girlfriend think when he returned home with a newly ruined article of clothing? If he returned at all.

Now there was a grim sentence. But Skizz was a realist. And the genuine logical reality of all this was that he’d probably bruised a bone or two and was overreacting completely.

His spine didn’t get the memo.

Shooting pain rushed up and down his muscles, nearly making him sick as he strained himself. His arms shook before giving way, and he just barely had time to clamp his jaw shut, so as to dampen the landing as much as possible. It wasn’t without his mind spewing a line of vial phrases though.

“This really isn’t looking good, Skizz,” Impulse shuffled forward. “You okay?”

“No, it’s not. And yes,” Skizz replied curtly. He gritted his teeth, trying again to bring his palms beneath him. After a moment, Impulse stretched out a tentative hand, placing it on his shoulder.

“Maybe… a few more minutes..?”

They were speaking that familiar language again. The one that said a thousand words, but only required the minimum. The one that they’d learned to interpret through studying the other. Impulse’s hand spoke volumes. Feeling the brush of fingertips against Skizz’s body sent a shiver down his already pained backside.

“Okay.”

Twenty minutes later, Impulse radioed the emergency frequency.

–+–

“Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea.”

“Huh?” Skizz opened his eyes, tipping his head backwards from where he was now laying on his back, wrapped in his sleeping bag. The crackle of the fire near his head filled the silent night air.

“The forest segment,” Impulse explained, hugging himself tighter in his thin cotton jacket. It was colder tonight than it had been the night before. And many of the stars were hidden through the dead leaves still on the trees. They would be falling soon, no doubt, littering the forest floor in a blanket of its own. The two of them were now regretting not having packed more properly for emergencies. Hindsight was constantly and annoyingly 20-20.

“You’re not just feelin’ sorry for me now are you?” Skizz chided jokingly. He was comfortable making light of the current situation. He was okay with mentally removing himself from this harsh reality. He was just tired and sore from the day. That was all. So they’d camped early. “I would hate to be scoring pity points, you know.”

Impulse was silent for a while. The low fire casted heavy shadows across his face. “…no. Genuinely. Now that I’ve been listening, it’s kinda… nice out here.”

Skizz smiled. “See? I told ya. And if they really like it, maybe they can send us other places, like the ocean. That could be cool, you think?”

“You mean..?” Impulse raised his head shyly.

“We could travel the world,” Skizz nodded eagerly. “Just like we always wanted to.

“You’re crazy.”

“I choose to take that as a compliment.”

“Well you shouldn’t.”

The momentary excitement dwindled. A tired sigh played on Skizz’s lips, and his smile faded, replaced with disheartenment. Pain still riddled his body, more prominent in places he hadn’t noticed before. But it was his heart that bled openly. It bled and it wept. Because despite his calm and collected face, a part of him really was scared. Fear twisted in his gut, unkind with its iron grip and sickening anxiety. He was infinitely better at hiding emotions than Impulse was. Now was no exception. But seeing his best friend so torn up about all this wasn’t exactly making it easy. There was pain, yes. But Skizz personally chose to stash it away. The two of them had always differed in their preferred coping mechanisms. Skizz believed that faking it till you made it was the answer to all problems. Impulse had a much softer approach. It did make his temper less stable, but if that was the only thing Skizz had to worry about when it came to this, then he’d still take it any day.

“I’m not dying, buddy,” he reminded his friend softly.

“You’re so lucky it wasn’t your head…”

“True. But seeing as it wasn’t, you can relax now.”

“Skizz…” Impulse found him in the firelight. “I don’t think you get it.”

Smoke curled into a perfectly still evening.

A pause followed. Skizz grew uncomfortable at it, as he swallowed nervously and filled the emptiness with, “Pitch it to me then.”

Impulse sniffled, and if it weren’t so dark, perhaps his watery eyes would be acknowledged. But the light of the low fire was too weak for that.

“What would I have done if it was your head? What am I supposed to do now? I don’t know CPR, or how to set a bone. I wasn’t ready for all this. And you’re acting like it’s nothing. But it’s not nothing. It’s an emergency. You’re in God knows how much pain and refuse to take the stupid tablets-“

“Impulse. The mountain rescue people are coming. They will find us, and I will be okay.”

“You don’t know that!”

“What did I tell you?” Skizz snapped, his tone dipping sharply.

“You say a lot of things, Skizz,” Impulse retorted.

“Happenstance,” Skizz glared through the dark, brows drawn together in seriousness. “You cannot plan for everything. This was never in your control.”

Sparks drifted from the pit of embers. They danced on the air, winking out of existence as if they'd never been there in the first place. And tree branches rattled above their heads, scraping against one another in an eerie disconsonant symphony. Earthy smells overpowered the fire despite being so close to its heat.

“You quoted Dead Poet Society earlier. You know that right?” Impulse asked. He twirled a small twig between his fingers absently —another coping mechanism. “There’s a similar saying in the movie. Something like ‘there’s a time for being daring and a time to be careful, and a wise man understands what is called for’.”

“Huh…” Skizz blinked, his vision blurring slightly.

“I’ll be the first to admit on both of our behalfs that we aren’t exactly wise,” Impulse broke the twig in half, tossing its pieces on the fire. “We’re not stupid either though. The jokes kinda made me.. feel stupid.”

“Okay.”

Skizz loved to make people laugh. He always had. That was why he broadcasted his voice across the county Monday through Friday, for hours on end. To bring people a little ounce of joy throughout their stress filled days and weary nights. And he got to do it alongside his best friend at that. But even more than laughter, Skizz strived to provide comfort. There could only be real laughter once comfort was established. And tonight, it was as if he was seeing Impulse for the very first time. Because in a way, he was. Impulse was in a state unfamiliar to him. And he’d been trying to push the wrong buttons all in the wrong order. So his gaze softened, relaxing as best he could despite his pain.

“Okay, Dipple-dop. No more jokes tonight.”

Impulse nodded, as if to reassure himself as well. “I just really don’t like happenstance, as you call it.”

“I know,” Skizz murmured. “I don’t like it either. I should have said that from the beginning.”

“It’s still pretty impressive how close your quote was though.”

Skizz chuckled. “If I had known that, I’d have kept my mouth shut.”

“To keep me from talking about it?” Impulse rolled his eyes, shoulders relaxing a little. “Actually, since you aren’t going anywhere, I can just tell you what happens.”

“Does this mean I won’t have to read the book.”

“Maybe. It depends on how well I remember everything.”

“Oh shut up, you remember everything!”

“Apparently everything except a first aid kit,” Impulse pointed out. “I know the first thing I’ll be doing once we get back home.”

“I think I should be the one making that purchase,” Skizz argued. “I was the one who fell down the hill, remember?”

“I suppose you are more accident prone.”

“Don’t remind me.”

“You know I could.”

“Just tell me about the book already. We’ll worry about this later.”

“Just as soon as you say it.”

“Say what now? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Say it.”

“You really are the worst, aren’t you.”

For the first time in hours, Impulse finally smiled. Its brilliance washed over Skizz in a warm wave, providing more heat than the fires embers ever could. He cherished this very moment in time, because despite how he’d been acting, this wasn’t going to be anything easy to get over. He had no clue whether the injury had repercussions or a long recovery time in store for him. But Impulse’s smile made everything better somehow. It glowed like the pale moon above them, twinkling like stars, infinite like space itself.

Skizz wondered how a man such as himself would go about gaining such depths —such wisdom. And then he remembered what Impulse had said.

‘There’s a time for daring, and a time for caution, and a wise man understands which is called for.’

And perhaps he would read that book when they returned home.

Maybe then he could gain a little bit of wisdom himself.

–+– The End –+–

#mcyt #hc_firewatch_au #skizzweek #skizzweek 1 #skizzleman #skizzfic #imp and skizz #impulsesv #impulse sv #imp and skizz podcast #hurt/comfort #fluff #oneshot #hermit fanfic #hermitcraft au

45 notes · View notes

quaranmine · 9 months

Text

on loss, loneliness, and the woods -

A web-weave for my fanfiction The Incandescence of a Dying Light.

What To Do When Lost in the Woods; US Forest Service Flyer, 1946 // don't go where i can't follow by @quaranmine // tales from earthsea: “dragonfly” by ursula le guin // both art pieces by Matt Rockefeller // The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac // That guy might be staring at you by @julia-famula with text from "The Answer is Not a Hut in the Woods" by exurb2a // Firewatch Aspen screenshot from @/ripandtearyourgutz // Firewatch burned forest screenshot from @/simlicious // "Another Grieving Forest" by Alfred Kreymborg // Oil Pastel 2012 by Andrea Starkey with lyrics from Long Lost by Lord Huron // "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" by Robert Frost // Bosgezicht by Barend Cornelis Koekkoek, 1848; divider created by @/cottage-writings

#hc_firewatch_au #hermitcraft #web weaving #quara_art #mcyt web weaving #i can take this out of the main web weaving tag if needed (for being fandom realted)#grian #mumbo jumbo #hermitcraft fanfic #i don't really know how to tag this sdjfslkjf

122 notes · View notes

quaranmine · 10 months

Text

A landscape drawing from chapter seven of Firewatch AU, depicting Shoshone National Forest, and the past year of the story in slices: summer, autumn, winter, spring, and back to summer once more.

#hermitcraft #grian #art #hc_firewatch_au #quara_art #it feels weird tagging this hermitcraft since it's just a landscape from an au but it's RELATED to it i promise sdfjslfjslf #alt text described #the reference photo i (very) loosely used is from the national forest; i got it from a backpacker's forum about hiking the thorofare trail

92 notes · View notes

quaranmine · 1 year

Text

The Incandescence of a Dying Light (Masterpost)

Cocoabats' gorgeous cover art!

Freedom of Recursive Content Opinion/Permissions

TUMBLR CHAPTERS AND ART:

Chapter One | Chapter One Art | Story Fanart <3

Chapter Two | Chapter Two Art

Chapter Three | Chapter Three Art

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six | Chapter Six Art

Chapter Seven | Chapter Seven Art

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

SECONDARY WORKS:

on loss, loneliness, and the woods (web-weave)

Only...Jellie can prevent forest fires? (art)

letters from the lookout #1: leave no trace (side ficlet)

letters from the lookout #2: last seen (side ficlet)

Honeylashofficial's Animatic (fanart!!)

Scar's Everyday Life by crazypercheron (fanart!!)

From Embers by honeylashofficial (recursive fanfic!! with Imp and Skizz)

OFFICIAL TAG AND RELEVANT POSTS:

#hc_firewatch_au

Amatonormativity

Lights in the Distance

Suicide? No.

Themes of Isolation

Wildfire experiences from followers: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten

Devil's Head Lookout

AutoCAD and 80s Tech

Shoshone National Forest Lookouts Compared to Game

Fire Lookouts I Visited

Scar + Mobility Aids

Grian's Vehicle

VHF Radios, Frequencies, and Story Accuracy

Absent Characters, Idealism, and Unreliable Narrators

Art Symbolism in The Incandescence of a Dying Light (minor spoilers)

The Background People of Firewatch AU (minor spoilers)

Scrapped Plot Ideas in Firewatch AU (minor spoilers)

What Happened to Mumbo/Mumbo's Timeline with Darkaviarymc (spoilers)

The Backcountry Permit Situation Clarification/Analysis (spoilers)

Subjectivity of "Experience"

#quara fanfic #hermitcraft #hc_firewatch_au #hermitfic

194 notes · View notes

quaranmine · 2 months

Text

the first pitching of the story, back in September 2022, basically a day or two after i finished playing the game. "i dont plan to write it" lol clearly I had no clue. I also dropped the idea of making Mumbo's fate vague pretty quickly because how even do you write that? Like, what clues do you give to make it unclear if he's secretly still alive or not? It just did not suit the story. You can also tell it's early because I called the job a "firewatch" instead of a "fire lookout" which is its proper name!

december 2022: i pick it back up as an idea

february 2023: i have begun to resign to my fate that this will be multi-chaptered, although i still think in my head it can be under 35k

and i leave you with a bonus message:

#hc_firewatch_au

27 notes · View notes

quaranmine · 2 months

Text

The Incandescence of a Dying Light (Chapter Eleven)

This is a story about grief and fire.

Chapter eleven: 13,460 words

<< Chapter Ten | Masterpost | Chapter Twelve >>

Hello everyone! I’m so sorry for the wait. But chapter 11 and 12 together add almost 20k words to this fic, and I actually ended up redrafting and restructuring parts of these chapters a lot. I wanted them to be as perfect as possible, because these chapters are it: the core of the plot paying off. The bad news is it’ll probably devastate you, the good news is that I will be releasing chapter 12 a few days after this so there won’t be a wait.

There's several content warnings that apply to this chapter. It's not obvious because this is the tumblr copy of this fic, but it's marked as CNTW on AO3. CWs: general mental health/breakdown, dissociation, vomiting, death, suicidal ideation (of the abstract kind), fires/burn/injury. I don't think it's too graphic but it is…unpleasant imo.

July 1989

Grian hangs up on Scar with a flick of a button. It’s a lot less dramatic than the satisfying clack of slamming a telephone receiver down into its base, but the effect is just as instant. With a press of a button, he silences the faint static of the radio and Scar’s worried voice forever, bathing him in nothing but the silence of the forest.

There’s him, the wind in the leaves above him, and the way his hands tremble as he sets the handheld radio down. Nothing else.

He’s unsteady. It’s a good thing he’s already sitting on the forest floor. He clamps a hand over his mouth and squeezes his eyes shut. He sits there for a moment, trying to regain control of his ragged breathing, as if he can by just breathing through his nose instead. It’s not working. His thoughts are racing. He breathes faster instead.

He feels—

Broken. Betrayed. Bitter. Burning himself over and over with the same mistakes, pitfalls, and dangerous hopes as always.

He feels like an idiot.

He feels like an idiot, because why should he assume someone was in his corner? Why did he ever say anything to Scar? Why didn’t he shut up? Why did he trust that when Scar helped him, it was because Scar believed him? Why did he fall for it?

He should have known better. He’s alone out here. It’s been like that since the beginning. It was kind of the point, actually. To come out here and be alone, because that’s the only way he’ll fix anything. He failed that goal by making friends with a stranger instead and now he’s suffering for it. It hurts too much.

But perhaps worse, perhaps the most insidious thought that keeps snaking around his mind is—

What if Scar is right?

The thought is like a giant, flashing billboard in his mind. He can turn away from it, but he knows it’s behind him. He can close his eyes against it, but the lights still blink against his eyelids. When he opens his eyes, he sees the stark truth of it all in each miserable outline of leaves against the sky. There’s some sort of wave crashing over him, and he isn’t sure which way is up anymore.

Everything is unavoidable, constantly present. Unpleasant.

He tries to find his logic again, but the bright, clear throughline he’s been following since day one is frayed. It shouldn’t matter what Scar thinks, in the same way it doesn’t matter what Pearl or Jimmy or any of his other friends think. It shouldn’t matter that Mumbo hasn’t been back to collect his things, because this is not proof that anything happened to him. This is only proof that Mumbo got lost, and that’s something Grian has known since day one. There is nothing new here, except proof that Mumbo was in this location at some point. That should be good news, a new puzzle piece for him to worry over.

It shouldn’t matter, but—

He feels very small in the forest suddenly. The trees around him have no stake in who lives and dies. They stand tall, a witness to the happenings of everything beneath them, but they cannot interfere. There are miles and miles of wilderness around Grian. There are mountain streams and creeks and gullies and canyons and caves that no human has seen for years. There is an almost infinite number of trees and flowers and grasses and shrubs and mammals and birds and bugs that populate this little world, and Grian is but one tiny speck in the midst of this. So is Mumbo.

He can’t find meaning in this. He can’t dig up some special exception, some reason that Mumbo is uniquely special in this ecosystem and it will all solve itself happily because the very ground itself will vow to keep him alive. This is a place filled with life and death and cutting wind and sharp stones. This is a place where fires raze down forests, mountain lions kill straggling deer, and people go missing.

These thoughts send him spiraling again.

So instead he tries to bury the feeling again, with desperate shaky hands. Like a zombie apocalypse, it just won’t stay dead. He’s dizzy. He stands up suddenly, leaving his own pack on the ground next to Mumbo’s, and takes a staggering step backwards to gain some distance from it all.

He has to find the rest of Mumbo’s camp before he moves on.

He tells himself not to dwell on it, but every other thought is punctuated by it. He tells himself to stop freaking out, to keep going, to just move forward, to keep his feet on the ground, but his laser focus is burnt out. These are all the things he’s told himself before, and it worked then. Why won’t it work now?

He finds Mumbo’s campsite easily through the trees, since it’s only a few hundred feet from where he left his food. The campsite is totally empty. Mumbo clearly packed everything up before he left to make sure he didn’t tempt any curious wildlife.

It’s rather anticlimactic, really, the way nothing is left here. There is an open space on the ground begging to have a tent set up on it, and a ring of stones encircling the ashes of an old campfire. Maybe Mumbo made that fire. When he went camping in early June of last year there wouldn’t have been any fire restrictions in place yet, at least not until the disastrous Yellowstone fires started shortly afterward. Or maybe it’s just as likely that someone else made it, since this campsite has clearly been used by other people in the past.

It’s a beautiful place, he realizes. For some reason the realization puts a lump in his throat. Mumbo chose this spot because it was beautiful, and it is beautiful. It is beautiful.

They’re in an aspen grove, surrounded by stark white trunks and bright green leaves. The aspens always have the brightest green leaves, compared to the darker green of the spruce trees. Grian has learned their colors well after spending so long examining the landscape from his tower. He loves how the different types of trees form a patchwork of different colors on the slopes. These trees will glow even brighter in autumn, when they paint the hillside in gorgeous golden yellow.

Scar told him once that aspen groves are actually all one tree. An aspen can reproduce by essentially cloning itself and sending up shoots to sprout as a new sapling. All of the clones share a root system, and their leaves will turn color at the same time. But to the person standing in the middle like Grian, it looks like an endless amount of trees instead of a single entity. It looks like eternity, just like the mountains and hills look like eternity from the high point of his lookout tower.

Aspens also like to grow in recently burned areas. This one, though, hasn’t seen fire for some time. The colony is mature, and from Grian’s perspective the trees are uncountable. He’s surrounded by them, and he’s alone, but the trees aren’t alone. They’ve got all their twins next to them. But there’s nobody to stand next to him. There’s nobody here but him.

He turns around, and stares at the pair of backpacks on the ground. He needs to figure out what to do with Mumbo’s pack. There isn’t any way he can carry it. He has his own weight to carry, and he has no room to add anything else. For the distances he needs to travel, he can’t afford to add more weight. He chokes a little on this realization. This is just another thing he’s going to have to leave behind.

There’s a hierarchy of things, and finding Mumbo himself is more important than keeping his belongings.

Finding Mumbo—

In any way.

Grian said that once earlier in the summer, about another missing person. He hoped they were found, in any way. For some reason, he remembers saying this now. He remembers finding the poster for that missing person, and thinking so fiercely how much it hurt that nobody was still in his corner after all these years. He remembers the ache that settles in around lost causes, and the deep sadness in Scar’s voice when he talked about how long that man’s case had been unsolved.

He’s becoming that person who gives up on lost causes.

No!

He shakes his head sharply, like it’s going to rattle the thoughts right out. He isn’t going to do that. He can’t do that. He isn’t like that. He isn’t giving up on Mumbo, because there is nothing to give up. This is just the test of faith at the eleventh hour. He needs to press further, because this is just the next step in his case. Nothing has changed. Nothing has changed.

What evidence is there, really, of Mumbo being dead? A missing persons report? The endless months on the calendar? The harsh winters? The abandoned survival equipment? None of that is physical, tangible proof. None of that is, is—

None of that is a body. That means he needs to keep going. That means he needs to keep going, even if he hikes until his feet bleed.

But…what evidence is there, really, of Mumbo still being alive?

This thought is a cliff, and Grian is stumbling over the edge into the abyss. At the last moment he turns back, flinging out a hand and grasping whatever he can find to keep himself from falling. Going over the edge means opening up a world of possibilities Grian doesn’t know how to deal with, or even begin to approach. It violently resets every facet of his life into something completely different. Something that can’t, and won’t, ever be the same. He doesn’t know how to live with that, and so before the yawning maw of these thoughts can eat him, he shoves them away.

He scrambles away from the edge into safety.

But once you know the edge is there, it never leaves.

He has to go somewhere else. He must go forward. The thing about life is that everyone must always go forward. When Grian couldn’t get out of bed last year, he still woke up the next day even if he didn’t remember falling asleep. When he skipped work, the bills still arrived. When Grian took this job, every mile he walked was another piece of the mystery shaved down into something slightly more manageable.

No matter if Grian is being dragged there or not, all he knows how to do is move forward. The only way to stop is to be dead. Did Mumbo stop? Did Mumbo stop going forward?

Where would Mumbo have gone? What would his goal have been?

He must have hiked further upward. The Pinnacles trail is named for its interesting rock formations, and this trail gets much more difficult the further one hikes. There is a pass at the top where it dips down the other side of the mountain and joins the old river trail that fur trappers used to use. Mumbo would have had to hike this trail instead of ride it. That's obviously why he left his bike. There’s too many steps and too many rocks to do anything else.

So, up he goes. Before he leaves, he places Mumbo’s pack against the tree it was strung up in, upright like a crude headstone. It’s a brightly colored, out of place marker in this natural setting—something crafted and sewn by human hands, carried by human bodies, and left behind consciously by a human mind.

Grian leaves.

He barely thinks about where he puts his feet, even when the trail starts to get fainter beyond the pinnacles it is named for. He barely thinks about anything grounded in reality at all with the way his thoughts circle relentlessly. He stumbles a few times, missing steps, but it doesn’t matter.

The Pinnacles trail is not actually just an out-and-back trail; it’s a spur trail that connects into a larger network of wilderness routes. It’s as well-traveled as a highway up until it reaches the main landmark, and after that it drops off to a route only marked by the occasional cairn. It is clear that most hikers turn around after reaching the stones. Grian knows Mumbo kept going, because Grian knows Mumbo.

The top of the mountain is not far from here. It seems like something that would have drawn Mumbo to keep going further. It’s some sort of tangible achievement, with a view to match. Since Mumbo was camped along the trail, it wouldn’t have taken him long to reach the pinnacles, unlike visitors who likely started much farther down by Jonesy Lake. Why stop and waste the rest of the day?

Mumbo had taken this time off last year to get a break from his job. He used to come home from it looking hunted—chased down with too many demands for too little reward. He used to talk about quitting. He had wondered if it had been worth it to even take the job. He moved to another country for it, after all.

Whether it was worth it or not wasn’t something Grian could answer for him. He’d just listen to Mumbo complain instead, and then maybe change the subject to something more fun, something distracting. It always bothered him to listen to Mumbo speak like that.

The answer to the problem was more complicated than just quitting, though. Grian could stay in the country as long as he wanted thanks to his dual citizenship. He was essentially there at a whim, following Mumbo so that he didn’t have to move to another country alone. Mumbo, however, was on a working visa that required him to keep a job in order to legally stay. His job was sponsoring him, allowing him to apply for the visa in the first place. As such, it wasn’t as simple as merely quitting.

Maybe he just wanted some sort of achievement to take back home, like climbing a mountain. Something he could think about when his boss tried to make him feel worthless.

Grian keeps going, and carries the pain and the pointlessness of it all as heavily as his bag that bites into his collarbones.

»»———-　　———-««

It isn’t until Grian is forced to stop, coughing and hacking so violently he feels like he may break his own ribs, that he even remembers Scar’s plaintive admonition.

Keep your radio on. Switch to the main frequency. Be aware. Come back, please. Be safe.

This message was lost to him in the noise his brain filled with as soon as he tried to think about Mumbo’s fate, but the more he coughs the more his mind is brought sharply back into physical reality. He coughs painfully and keeps coughing, unable to stop at all, until finally he is gasping for breath and fumbling with the water bottle he keeps in the side pocket of his backpack. He drinks half of it down in large, greedy gulps.

He’s above the treeline now. Somewhat alarmingly, he barely remembers getting here, but the pain in his throat has brought him squarely back into the unfortunate land of the living. He leans against a nearby rock, head spinning from the sudden clarity.

It’s the smoke that is the problem. It seems everywhere now, even though earlier it was just the faintest scent on the wind now and then. Now it clings everywhere in his nose and mouth and throat and lungs.

This also dawns on him with slow horror: He can’t see his tower from here.

Given the elevation he’s at now, there shouldn’t be any reason that he can’t look across the horizon and find the tiny man-made angles of his former home. He’s far enough away that it will be extremely small, but it should still be visible to the trained eye. The entire point of a lookout, of course, is its visibility. He cannot see it, however. Even more worryingly, he can’t even properly see the mountain it sits on.

Instead he sees nothing but haze. The air to the east is dense and orange. Before, the smoke was in a specific direction. Now, it seems like it’s everywhere.

The air itself seems to have an orange cast to it right now. It feels like a dusty sunset, where the light is intensely copper, and thus Grian’s mind keeps trying to tell him it’s later in the day than it actually is. It’s somewhere around 6 PM in reality. In the middle of summer like this, the sun won’t set for another three hours. And still, the light is so exceptionally orange.

Dread grows in the pit of his stomach as he tries to pick out where the fire is, and realizes he can’t. Alarm flares in him. This fire is not like the leisurely slow-burn of the Trout Fire last month. It is a behemoth of thick billowing smoke that seems like it has doubled since Grian first spotted it this morning. The intense smoke right now is what keeps Grian from seeing its edges.

How big is that thing, actually? And what direction is the wind blowing?

The answer settles over him like the particulate matter he’s already inhaling: the wind is most likely blowing towards him. He smells the smoke now. He couldn’t smell it earlier.

For good measure, he starts coughing again and hangs his head while he does, waiting for the fit to pass. When he finally stops, he digs a bandana from somewhere in the depths of his bag and ties it around his face. It’s a poor excuse for any sort of proper protection, but it limits the amount of smoke making its way into his lungs the best it can. At the absolute minimum, he has a placebo effect working for him.

He pulls out his radio again, and stares at it for a moment, before caving and turning it on. He dials it into the main Forest frequency, at least the one for the Wapiti District. For some reason, it’s full of static. Is it the distance? He isn’t sure. He knows his tower serves as a repeater, but he doesn’t understand how it all works. This only adds to the mounting dread and he fiddles around, trying to make it sound stronger. He can pick out about half of what is being said, and tries to fill in every few words by context clues alone. Dispatch is clear. The ground crew is garbled. He’s only really getting one side of the picture, and not the side he needs the most.

While he listens, he watches.

Jonesy Lake is part of the Two Forks district, his district, and it’s to the west of his tower. The Thorofare district, Scar’s lookout, is north of his tower. This fire had started somewhere on the other side of Jonesy Lake, a little southwest. Pinnacles is further northwest, out of Grian’s district and into someone else’s.

What is concerning is that this fire, the southwesterly fire, has grown. It is more of a northwesterly fire now. He can no longer see where his trail originated, and he should be able to see it given how high he is on the mountain. His view is unobstructed by trees or hills, and he still can’t see it. He started in a meadow far below, and now he’s at the top. He can’t see the meadow anymore.

Grian falls back onto habit, and begins to watch the fire like he was trained. His heart beats in his chest like a hammer though—it is far more exhilarating and terrifying than it is from the safety of his tower. He’s going through the motions in his head, listening to reports and checking the wind speed the best he can and tallying the daylight hours remaining and the cardinal directions and running the mental calculations. He’s—

He’s scared. He’s utterly terrified.

This is a new type of panic, distinct from the call of the abyss he felt earlier. That panic had been earth-shattering. This panic is primal, but it creeps over him slowly.

The man from dispatch is directing a fire crew on the ground that must have either been flown in or hiked in after Grian did. He says the fire is moving deeper into the backcountry, away from Jonesy Lake. This is both a blessing and curse. A blessing, as it protects the main tourist attraction of the area and historic structures such as Grian’s lookout. A curse, because the deeper a fire is in the backcountry the more difficult and expensive it is to fight.

It’s also a curse because Grian is on the wrong side of the fire. It’s between him and getting back out. It wasn’t like that earlier in the day, or maybe he wouldn’t have bothered to try to find Mumbo’s campsite after all. He’s not that crazy, he swears he isn’t. He would have waited another day, he would’ve figured something out. He wouldn’t have walked purposefully toward a wildfire.

The wind has changed direction.

“I can’t go back the way I came,” he realizes, and it’s this spoken-out-loud sentence that finally snaps him into action. It’s like a bucket of ice water was dumped over his head.

He snatches up his bag. He can’t stay here and wait to figure it out. He needs to go now.

Immediately, he turns his back on the fire, looking at the steep final pitch he needs to scramble up in order to cross the mountain pass. If he can make it to the other side, he’ll be deeper in the backcountry and away from the fire. Maybe Mumbo went over there too at one point—further into the beyond that Grian can’t save him from. Lost in the hills of a different set of valleys.

He takes one step forward, but this isn’t right. This isn’t right at all. He feels information come to him like an uneasy prickle on the back of his neck. It’s a barely uncovered thought, something he heard once while Scar was talking about the Trout Fire and filed away somewhere in his brain ever since.

Wildfires move faster uphill than they do downhill.

Like, insanely faster. Deadly faster.

Scar had told him this, and then he’d made some sort of joke about the irony of their lookouts being perched on the highest hills in the area. He told Grian that sometimes lookouts needed to be evacuated from wildfires via helicopter, and that if a fire reached the base of either of their mountains they would be in imminent danger. Grian, of course, reacted to this much in the same way he did when thinking about lightning striking his tower or meeting a grizzly bear on the trail: fear. Scar laughed in that infuriating way he did sometimes, where danger didn’t really exist and risk seemed to be something he played with ease.

The danger does exist. Grian’s run his allotment of risk-taking dry. Scar wasn’t laughing anymore about this on the radio earlier today. It’s not just his elevation at play, here. It’s also the wind blowing toward him.

His heart pounds.

He should go…down. That’s something people do in these situations. He should go down, and away, as far as he can and as fast as he can.

He nearly makes a move to switch his radio back to the frequency he and Scar share, just so he can ask. He doesn’t though, stopping himself at the last second. His finger hovers over the button, but he doesn’t press it. It stings more than it should. Right, he’s—

Failing at finding Mumbo. An idiot. In danger.

—going to have to go downhill.

His brain snaps onto a new plan immediately: valleys.

Water runs downhill. Every valley and canyon was carved by water. The snowmelt off these peaks form hundreds of ephemeral streams each spring, most of which flow downhill into a bigger stream. Those bigger streams often flow between the mountains and form the tributaries of the Yellowstone River. He’d crossed a stream earlier in the meadow, a nice little makeshift log bridge covering it.

Water and fire don’t mix. If he goes downhill, he’ll probably find that stream at some point—nearly a sure bet in this type of topography. He’ll be safe if he goes down. He’ll be safer if he’s next to water. He needs to find water.

Don’t they use streams as temporary fire lines? Could the fire cross that? He isn’t sure, but he’ll take the unknown over the certain danger he does know.

Grian picks a direction away from the fire as far away as he can possibly angle himself, gives it a long final look, and nearly flees downhill.

The route is, to put it lightly, rough. The trail was already steep, but at least it was cut into the mountainside and worn from many feet crossing it. At least it was marked, tried, and tested. The open slope of the mountain is more random under his feet, and every time he steps onto loose scree he nearly falls as it rolls under his boots. He does end up falling one or two times, and it’s more like his feet gently sliding out from under him. He doesn’t run, for fear of tripping, but he lightly hops down and over rocks and pushes past bushes. As he drops in elevation, the amount of vegetation surrounding him increases and the hiking gets more difficult.

Soon he’s back into the forest, disoriented again. He can’t really see the fire anymore—all he knows is that he was going this way, this way, so he keeps going that way. The air is thick and burnt, heavy with haze. He knows he’s still going the right direction by picking whichever way the air is the clearest. Still, every time he has to go around an obstacle, there’s a fear in his chest that he won’t find his chosen direction again.

The mountain is getting steeper the further he goes down. It is not leveling out like he expected it to. There was a meadow at the bottom, wasn’t there? Or was that—was that more to the southeast? After scrambling down a short drop he stops again to catch his breath, wheezing through the bandana. He pulls out the topo map he took out of Mumbo’s file, tries to look at the lines to find the safest way down, and—oh.

He doesn’t know where he is anymore.

He knows what direction he went when he left the trail, and what direction the fire was in, but there’s no way for him to tell which little ripple and bump in the topography has his current location. He doesn’t know how far he has gone, or where on the slope he is. This is concerning, but truthfully it barely registers in his mind. He’s still smelling smoke. He can sort his location out afterwards if necessary.

He puts the map back into his bag. Right, this isn’t good, but he just needs to keep going down. He needs to keep going down. He shouldn’t think about the smoke he can smell, or the lack of visibility, or his own stupidity. Does it feel hotter or is his mind playing tricks on him? Is he having a heart attack or is he just out of breath? Is he going to die?

Is he going to die?

The way this question takes over his brain is almost fascinating. He hasn’t—he hasn’t focused so much on himself in a long time. He’s focused every ounce of energy he has into finding Mumbo. And Mumbo—Mumbo isn’t here, but he is, and is he going to die?

Does he mind?

No, of course he minds. The fire might as well be lit beneath his feet instead of further down the mountain with the way he’s running.

Grian is so busy contemplating if he is going to die or not—and really, his brain shouldn’t be running these two scripts at once, he should be fully focused in the moment, but even now there’s that string of panicked thoughts—that he almost misses it when the ground goes from kind-of-steep to dangerously steep. He scrambles to a stop, disoriented, and finds himself looking over an edge.

Calling it a cliff is generous. It’s not really a cliff, not in the “hundred foot straight drop” sense. He looks to the side, but there isn’t a clear way to avoid the drop by going down the side. It’s rocky, and he can probably climb his way down if he’s careful about it.

He swings his legs out of over the drop with the intention of lowering himself a little slower to the next spot to put his feet. He lets the gravity take him, but the backpack he’s carrying is heavy and unwieldy enough to throw off his balance, so—

“Ah!” he shouts, and then lands sharply on his ankles. There’s a split-second of pain before he’s falling to the side, the weight on his back dragging him down when his feet don’t stick the landing.

And he’s going down again, much faster than intended.

He’s sliding now, taking dirt and gravel with him, because the rock he’d been intending to land on wasn’t really that stable of a spot to begin with, it was just one piece of a controlled descent, but he’s out of control now. And he can’t stop.

The rocks tear at his clothes, his limbs, his backpack.

He lands several feet down, stopped by the merciful branches of a prickly bush.

He’s okay. He’s actually okay. His heart beats wildly, and he takes a moment to tip his neck back, resting his head on the top of the pack that still sits on his shoulders. He doesn’t even extract himself from the branches immediately. He just sits, and pants for a minute.

There’s another drop just in front of him, a lot further than the one he just fell from. A little less “second story window” and a little more “probable severe injury.” He stares at it. He could’ve fallen down that. The more he starts to come down from the adrenaline rush, the more his ankle starts to throb. It doesn’t seem to be broken though, just sore. It’s just background noise to him at this point.

He balls his hands into fists, fingernails cutting into his palms. This is just—this is just adding insult to injury, at this point. This is all stupid. He’s making stupid decisions, stupid lapses in judgement, and he doesn’t know how to stop.

Can’t he do anything right? Can’t he just do this one, one thing? After all this time, all this effort?

Can’t he just find his best friend? Can’t he do this without damaging all his other relationships, with the people at home who care about his well being? Can’t he do this without upsetting Scar? Can’t he do this without hurting himself, or putting himself in danger, or hurting everyone else? Can’t it just stop?

He just wants it all to stop.

Something picks him up off the ground, anyway.

He dusts off his pants, a futile motion for a person who’s been hiking for a day and a half straight. He tests his weight on his ankle which, while definitely feeling weak, holds him. He takes stock of his new location: still somewhere on the side of this mountain, still lost. He dropped from a further height than planned, and the only thing that awaits him is more rock scrambling. Above him are rocks, and below him are…rocks, with maybe a tree or two.

He thinks he spies some sort of ledge, or at least something he can walk laterally down, so he heads for it. Hopefully he’ll find a spot that’s easier to go down than the one he landed in. He doesn’t really have a choice to figure something out.

There’s something off about this location though, and he doesn’t know what it is. He almost feels silly for noticing it, and writes it off as his head still spinning from the overwhelming amount of input he’s parsing. His heart still hasn’t calmed yet, and there’s no way he’s getting a good amount of oxygen for his exertion with all the smoke in the air.

He reaches the ledge, and realizes it is part of an overhang. At one point in time, this rock shelter weathered when the softer stone eroded faster than the harder layer of stone above it. Today, it’s just one more feature in the steep northeastern slope of the Pinnacles mountain.

He looks to the left, and then—

That’s when he spies it.

He’ll remember it, just like he remembers the day he told Mumbo it was a good idea to go on his trip alone. He’ll remember it, just like he remembers the day the ranger told him Mumbo never made it back to his car. He’ll remember it, just like he remembers when the search was finally suspended after three weeks. He’ll remember it, just like he remembers lying in bed in a daze, thinking about how deep the snow gets in Shoshone National Forest over the winter.

He’ll remember it, just like he remembers the first time someone told him Mumbo was probably dead.

There is a figure under the overhanging rock. It’s so random it almost seems comical, if it weren’t for the way Grian immediately feels sick. There’s a figure curled in this tiny spot of shelter on the mountainside, as far as one could possibly get away from the rain or sun or cold.

It is not another rock, or a tree branch, or an animal. It’s—it’s a person. Every contour and slightest variation in shape matches. Grian knows what a person is shaped like, he knows it deep in his DNA, where he’s programmed from the inside out into knowing what another human looks like. It’s instinctual. It’s something he was born with.

This isn’t an animal, this is something much more important. This is a human.

And just as instinctually, he also knows that this is no longer a human. It’s a corpse. What once was no longer is, and what lies before him on the stone is something he’s not meant to see. There is a primeval part of his brain, concerned with survival and avoiding danger—concerned with avoiding disease and all those other medieval problems—that tells him he should avoid this at all costs. It’s danger. It was human, but it’s not anymore. He should go, but he’s rooted to the ground.

It’s—

He’s—

Time stops. The thick scent of smoke still hangs in the air, just as it has all evening, but the wind doesn’t blow in the treetops. The flames in the forest don’t lick any higher. Time folds in on itself until it’s this one, small moment, incapable of folding any further and bursting with unreleased potential energy as everything else holds still. Nothing else matters. There is nothing else but this and this and this, and this and this and this.

This isn’t Mumbo.

Mumbo doesn’t exist anymore, and the person Mumbo was before doesn’t exist anymore, because the person in front of him was alive once but is no longer, and the person in front of him is a corpse. It’s a thing, it’s an object, it’s disgusting, it’s—it isn’t Mumbo. Mumbo isn’t like this. Mumbo has endless potential. He’s smart. He’s nervous. He’s kind. He’s silly.

And yet—he knows it’s Mumbo. It is him. It cannot be anyone else. He knows it better than anything he has known before, and he recognizes it immediately even when Mumbo is unrecognizable. He knows Mumbo well enough that he can recognize him even when he isn’t himself anymore, even when he’s something else.

Even when he’s dead.

That’s all. It’s a horrifying, horrifying, finality. He’s dead. Two words, one sentence, everything. It’s not real, because it can’t be. It cannot be true, because if it is, then nothing else is true either.

He’s dead and, and, this is it isn’t it? This is it. This is all there is and all there was this entire time. This is the breaking of everything he believes in, split down the middle, carving into his chest with a sharp knife, cracking open his ribs until there’s blood spattered on the floor. The world sort of spins in his purview, dizzying, and he drops to his knees without noticing or caring about it.

He wants to touch him, but he can’t. He wants to hug him one last time, or hold him, and tell him it’s alright, but he can’t. He recoils at the sight and stops just short, still kneeling on the ground. It’s been months. It’s been—a year, because Grian knows what he’s always known, what he’s always ignored, what other people have told him over and over again, which is that Mumbo never had much of a chance anyway. He was dead long ago. He didn’t hang in there for a few months and succumb to the winter. He didn’t survive the winter and then fail to find the resources to live through the spring.

He’s been dead this whole time.

He’s been—

Grian has been so stupid. And yet, he’d rather be stupid than look at this now. He’d rather not know what he knows now. He doesn’t want to. He doesn’t want to do anything. He doesn’t want to be here at all.

Mumbo might have already been dead when Grian walked the trails by Cloud Lake last summer. He might have already been dead by the time the helicopters were sent out. He was likely already dead by the time the searches were suspended, just like the incident commander had regretfully informed him. He was probably still alive when Grian reported him missing, though.

He was dead this entire summer, and most of last summer. Grian’s stomach lurches.

It’s been months. It’s…obviously been months. The elements aren’t kind. The winters are harsh and the summer sun is cruel, even in the mild shelter this overhang offers. Rocks can’t protect from everything. The animals haven’t been kind, either. None of the elements know. The wilderness doesn’t know. They don’t know—they don’t know that this is Mumbo, Grian’s best friend, his everything. They just don’t see—

Grian sees.

Bones. Insects. Desiccated flesh. Eye sockets. No hair, no face, stained ripped clothes, broken and gnawed bones—

He turns to the side and vomits, barely yanking the bandana off his head in time. He nearly chokes on it, spitting miserable bile and unable to take a breath, and thinks, I don’t want to be here anymore. I want to be gone, like he is, so that I don’t have to see this, or feel this, anymore.

When he’s done he drops his head between his knees and screams. And with that, something breaks inside him, and he’s no longer kneeling but laying on his side, curled in the fetal position. It’s the same position Mumbo was in. His entire body trembles.

The air is thick with too many scents. There’s the ever-present smell of burning, and the smell of his vomit next to him, and the smell of other things he’s never wanted to put a name to. He gags again, and somewhere along the way that heave turns into a cry.

He sobs. He sobs so hard his whole body shakes with the effort. He sobs so hard that he can’t breathe, and he starts to feel a little dizzy, until that primeval part of his brain concerned with survival takes over once again and drags the breath from his lungs. He wants to, though. He wants to cry so hard he actually passes out. He doesn’t want his brain to force him to take a breath when he doesn’t think he can. He wants to be anywhere but here. He wants to be gone. He wants to be dead.

He can’t live with this.

He doesn’t want to live with this.

There’s no point to it, is there?

There’s no point to anything, is there?

His sobs turn into coughing after a while, his throat and lungs dry from the large gulps of air he’s been taking in. It’s painful deep in his chest, but it eventually subsides leaving him exhausted.

He lies still. His body still shakes. With every shallow inhale and exhale he trembles. His face feels waxy and foreign and his limbs like lead. He uncurls slightly. No part of his body feels like it’s attached to his mind anymore.

There is him, and there is his body, and there is Mumbo, and none of them are in the same place right now.

He watches the light move imperceptibly on the cave wall, as the sun slowly gets dragged back down the horizon and the shadows lengthen and bend. Darkness comes early to the mountain hollows, when the trees and the rocks and hills block the sun from view. It was late afternoon when he found Mumbo’s camp. It was early evening when he started back down the mountain for his own safety.

Does his safety matter anymore? Does he want it to matter? Does he even care? He doesn’t know what time it is anymore, but still the sun moves slowly along the walls.

He watches the light get dragged away from him.

Grian stays there for a period of time he can’t measure. The shadow drifts along the wall as the light fades more, but the light in the cave doesn't necessarily dim, it just grows more golden. He shuts his eyes against this. Orange might just be his least favorite color, the way it permeates everything from the setting sun to the hazy evening air.

But—it’s Scar’s favorite color, isn’t it?

He still has his radio. His pack might be discarded up top, but he has kept the radio in his pocket no matter what. Its yellow light was blinking earlier, back when he was at his towers this morning, hours ago, lifetimes ago. It’s still alive, however. It’s there, just a button press away. He could do it, but it’s like the radio doesn’t even belong to him anymore.

He fumbles in his pocket with a hand that’s not his. He brings the radio up to his face, dirty and scraped and resting on the rocky cave floor. It’s a foreign object. Slowly, with a thumb that’s not his own, he depresses the side button and hears a voice that’s not his own rasp a single name. His lifeline.

“Scar.”

The effect is immediate. “Grian!” the radio crackles, but Grian’s head is still funny and none of this is happening in the real world, so he loses most of the next sentence to the growing static in his mind. The connection is clear, but the words are not. “I was trying . . . ages ago, are . . . still . . . Do you . . .”

“Scar,” Grian says again, and this time the voice sounds more like his, and he says it because it’s all he can say.

“Are you okay?” Scar says. “Please tell me you’re okay, please, you stopped responding hours ago and I—I’m worried, I’ve been keeping an eye on the situation. What’s going on?”

Grian drifts again. He stares at the delineation between light and shadow on the wall, and contemplates the smell of smoke. It’s more acrid than the smell of a normal campfire. It smells like plastic, which is crazy, because shouldn’t the only thing that’s burning be wood and leaves? It’s so strong it threatens to suffocate him. He wishes it would.

Finally, he formulates something else. “He’s here,” he says, and his voice breaks.

“Who’s here?” Scar says.

“It’s Mumbo,” Grian says, with a strangled noise. “He’s here,” and the present tense sounds so wrong and right in his mouth, because he’s not really here but he should be. He’s not a person anymore and Grian is. He’s sitting right next to Grian, but Grian is here and he isn’t.

Nothing about this is fair. It shouldn’t have been like this. It shouldn’t have been like this.

“Oh, Grian,” Scar says, and his voice is infinitely gentle. Grian could lose himself in that voice, let it cover him and sweep him away to a place where he doesn’t have to think about this anymore. His voice is a facsimile of reality, though. The real world hurts more. It doesn’t mean Grian wants to listen to him any less.

Scar is still speaking. He somehow knows the things Grian doesn’t say. He knows the things that linger in the air and smoke between them. All he says is, “Oh no.”

Scar’s voice is—Scar’s voice is familiar in a way that breaks Grian all over again. It’s this little bit of sympathy, this person who might come even the slightest bit to understanding, that makes him feel like he can’t handle it anymore. What little he’s doing to compose himself in this situation needs to be handed over to Scar completely, because Scar knows. He can understand.

Grian breaks at the sound of Scar’s voice. He starts crying again, as hard as before, and he depresses the button on his radio again, nearly delirious and unintelligible, and starts talking to Scar.

“It’s not supposed to be like this, Scar,” he cries. “I was su-supposed to be here too. He asked me to go with him, and I said no, so he came out here alone, and it’s—it’s my fault. And I never found him in time, and it’s my fault, he’s dead now, and he’s been dead for months, and, and, this wasn’t supposed to happen!”

He doesn’t say You were right. He doesn’t say The search and rescue team was right. He doesn’t say Jimmy and Pearl were right. He doesn’t say any of that at all. He just cries.

“Shh,” Scar says. “It’s okay, it’s okay. No, it isn’t. I would never lie to you, G. Nothing is okay. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“I can’t take this, I can’t take this, I can’t take this,” Grian babbles. “I need to—I can’t—I can’t take this. This isn’t real.”

“Grian—” he doesn’t finish the sentence. He doesn’t have to. He lets go of his radio’s button, turning control of the tragedy back over to Grian.

“He was everything, Scar!”

Grian feels like his chest is a black hole, sucking his body into itself and rending it apart into shattered pieces. There is nothing left. There is nothing left but this, and there is nothing more important than this.

He’s silent for a long time, with tears slipping down his face and a body too tired to sob any longer. He’s silent for probably too long, because his radio incessantly crackles and warbles, but the words Scar is speaking don’t make sense any longer. It might as well be white noise, like logs burning in a fire on a cozy evening. Grian’s checked out.

He hears nothing but the distant rush in his ears.

He’s too tired to engage, so he turns the radio off and stares at the light moving across the wall again. In the time he’s spoken to Scar, the shadow has made it to the next crack in the stone. For a while there is nothing but him and the fading light, and the corpse just outside his peripheral.

There’s him, his best friend, that thick artificially golden light, and the smell of vomit-inducing failure.

He deserves to die here next to Mumbo. It’s how it should have been, if he’d just gone with Mumbo like he was supposed to have, instead of working instead. Whatever issue Mumbo experienced, Grian should have experienced it alongside him. This is all his fault. It’s all his fault, and he deserves nothing more than to spend the rest of his days right here.

How could he be so selfish? How could he let his best friend in the world go? How could he know his best friend so little that he couldn’t even find him when he was in trouble? How could he do anything right now except stay?

The air in the overhang is stuffy, and Grian wraps a hand around his nose and mouth like it will help. He expected there to be more of a smell—but that implies he suspected Mumbo’s death at all. Maybe the smoke has wrapped itself around the smell and overpowered it. Or maybe he’s always smelled this, the pungent odor of his failure. The scent of a future he refused to acknowledge. It’s hard work having to breathe when the air is hot and acrid.

He wants to vomit again, but he doesn’t. Instead his mouth runs wet with extra saliva, a mild comfort to his raw throat, if he ignores the way his stomach twists.

Eventually that silence rings in his pounding head just a little too loudly, and Grian flicks the radio on again, because he selfishly needs more. He needs that voice again with its promises of something being okay in the end. After all this time, he still can’t accept that this is completely his fault and that he deserves whatever punishment happens. He needs more, like he needs air to breathe.

“Scar,” he says again, and it's a plea. It is a life preserver thrown into the dark, inhospitable waters.

Scar is miles away. He’s always been miles away. He has never been, and will never be, a comforting presence to wrap his arms around Grian. But his voice is familiar and warm. His voice is a constant Grian hasn’t had for months until he took this job. His voice is a constant that might save Grian right now, if he’s lucky enough.

“Thank god, Grian, when I saw you turned off your radio—are you okay—” the rest of Scar’s sentence dissolves into static once more.

“No,” he whispers.

“I know,” Scar says kindly. “That was a silly question, huh? Grian, I’m going to help you. Do you know where you are? I can send someone out. They’ll come help you, and, and—Mumbo.”

“Okay,” he says. Help sounds good. He’s so tired of being alone.

“Are you hurt?” Scar asks.

Grian’s ankle smarts from where he fell on it earlier, right before finding Mumbo. It’s the first time he’s even noticed the pain, because the moment he saw Mumbo everything else on his mind was wiped clean. He doesn’t think it’s important, though, so he responds, “No.”

“Where are you?” Scar asks.

“I don’t know.”

Scar prods gently. “You found Mumbo’s bag and campsite up on Pinnacles.” He says the sentence precisely, and doesn’t mention the way Grian fought with him. He also does not say I told you so, or criticize Grian’s decision. “Are you still on Pinnacles?”

“No,” he says. “No, I left the trail. I went—”

Grian tries to think, but his brain is sieve, leaking information out onto the floor. It’s as dense and unrelenting as the tan smoke blanketing the sky. He remembers being told he lost his job, but that seems so pointless now. He remembers finding Mumbo’s campsite, but he doesn’t remember how high he hiked on the trail beyond it. He remembers the searing jolt of fear he felt when he saw the wildfire’s new positions, but he doesn’t remember a single step he took off trail.

It’s all a blur of rushing and blankness until he’s here. He can’t think of anything else, because there isn’t anything else. There is nothing else to define about the day, except for the presence lying on the cold stone next to him. This is the only thing Grian will remember about today, and he wishes it was all blank too. There is nothing and there will be nothing else for the end of time.

Grian can’t think.

The radio crackles again. “Grian, are you still with me?”

“Mm,” he says, because full words are hard.

“Do you remember the way you came?”

“I was running,” he says. “I went…away. I went down. It’s really steep.”

Scar’s voice is suddenly much more serious. “Grian, what made you leave the trail? Why were you running?”

“The fire,” he responds. “I saw the fire. I went downhill. I wanted to get to the water.”

The Nitwit fire, named for the idiots who started it, is rapidly growing in area and risk. The memory of it trickles eerily back into Grian’s brain. When he’d been closer to the top of the mountain and realized the danger he was in, he’d been absolutely terrified. He knew he needed to move or it would kill him. Depending on the environmental factors, outrunning a fire is impossible.

He doesn’t think he can move anymore, though. Fleeing doesn’t sound so appealing, not when there’s nothing left to run towards. He turns over this thought with detachedness. It’s over now, so what’s the point?

“The fire? Are you in a safe spot right now?” Scar demands. “How close was it when you saw it?”

Grian doesn’t really process this question. Scar is being insistent, urgent, but nothing seems that way to him anymore. He didn’t see the fire at all, just its smoke. He doesn’t care about a safe spot. This is the only spot he needs to be in. He doesn’t respond.

At his silence, Scar continues. “I’m guessing you went northwest,” he says. “That’s the opposite direction of the fire and there’s a creek in the valley on that side.” There is a rustle of paper on the other end, like he’s pulled out a map. “Does that sound right? I need to figure out exactly where you are.”

Scar asks a lot of questions.

“Grian,” he says sharply, almost rudely. “Grian, come on. Talk to me.”

Where is he? That doesn’t matter.

The internal compass in his brain isn’t working particularly hard right now, since every time he tries to stretch his consciousness beyond this overhang he gets snapped right back. Mumbo is just lying there, slightly out of his peripheral vision. He can’t even turn his head without catching a glimpse of it, and it feels like dying every time. How could he think of anything else?

Mumbo is just lying there.

“Scar,” he says, ignoring everything he was just asked. “Scar, I don’t get it. What is he doing here? Why did he come here? Why is he here? Why isn’t it me? Why wasn’t I here? I think he fell Scar, I think he fell just like I did. I think he hurt himself and couldn’t get back to his camp. And I wasn’t even there to help him.”

“You fell?” Scar urges, like all his attention is zapped on that word. “You didn’t say that, are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” he says automatically. “Don’t worry about me.”

“Kind of hard not to, G.”

“I’m fine,” he repeats. “I’m just—Scar, I can’t go anywhere! I can’t leave him. What if I never find it again? What if this is it? I don’t want to go anywhere else, I’m staying here! Next to him!”

“But you need to go,” Scar says. “Come on, I need to know where you are. Help me figure it out.”

“No, no, no, no,” Grian says. “I can’t leave. I—if I go, what if I can’t come back? What if I can’t find it? What if I lose this place, and he’s really gone forever?”

“I won’t let that happen! Hey, if I figure out where you are, then I’ll know where he is too. We can tell the rangers, and, and the search and rescue people or whatever. They’ll find him again. It’s okay. You did your part. You found him. I wanna do mine.”

“I can’t leave him again,” Grian says. “I never should have in the first place.”

“I don’t think you ever left him,” Scar says softly. “He always had someone who believed in him this whole time. Some people don’t have that.”

“I can’t leave.”

“I need you to.”

“I don’t care.”

“But I do.”

And it’s difficult to keep arguing the matter when there’s someone in his ear who won’t take no for an answer. Someone who is desperately pleading with him over his own life and his safety. Maybe Grian is to Scar what Mumbo is to Grian. Maybe Grian can’t inflict that type of pain on someone else, even if he’s perfectly willing to inflict it on himself. Maybe if he does this he’ll be guilty of hurting one less person.

Grian screws his eyes shut. “It hurts,” he says finally. “It feels like everything hurts.”

“I know,” Scar says and—

Grian knows that he does know.

Somehow, at that point he makes a decision. His brain still feels slightly untethered and foggy. He isn’t himself anymore, not really. He doesn’t care about that person, the one who was a best friend and an architect and then a fire lookout, anymore. He doesn’t care about that person’s outcome. But he does care about not causing any more harm than he already has, even if it means keeping that person alive.

For once more, and the beginning many more once mores in his life, he rallies himself to go forward again.

“I don’t know where I am,” he says to Scar. “Or how close the fire is. I think I was going northwest, but…I got lost. I don’t know if I always went that direction, because I had to move around things sometimes. I just went down.”

He sits up. It’s a monumental effort, and his head spins again like the world is tipping instead of becoming right-side up. He has his back to Mumbo and it sends prickles down his neck.

“It’s really steep here,” he continues. “Like a cliff below me, maybe. If I fall I would get really hurt. It’s rocky above me too but not as bad. I’m sort of in the middle of it. I was—I was looking for a safer way to get down when I…” He trails off. He can’t finish that sentence.

“Okay,” Scar says. “That’s helpful. I can—I can probably find that a little easier, it’ll show up on the topo map that there is a big change in elevation. Can you see any other landmarks?”

“No,” he murmurs. “Too smoky.”

“How smoky?” Scar asks, and that edge is back in his voice. It’s worry.

He swallows. “Worse than earlier.”

Scar doesn’t respond for a long time. Grian regards his radio while he waits. Its light is red now. It blinks. That’s not good. He has no idea how long it’ll last before it dies. This reality still seems sort of distant though, like he can’t quite muster up the energy to care about it. Oh look, there’s a little blinking light. Oh look, there’s a fire. Oh look, his best friend is dead. Oh look, he might die too. It’s all just…pointless. There is so much potential danger in his situation and he’s numb to all of it.

He just watches the little light blink over and over again. He feels like a statue.

Grian doesn’t really like the silence Scar has left him, nor does he really understand why. Except it’s not really silence right now, is it? He tilts his head. There’s been sound this entire time. What he assumed was just the blood rushing in his ears is actually a very real roar.

He pieces together what it is the moment Scar gets back.

“I found it!” Scar cries suddenly, the radio exploding into noise again. “I found you, on the map I mean, which I guess means I also found…him. But I know where you’re at! I think!”

And Grian simply says, “I think I hear the fire.”

“What?”

“They’re loud, aren’t they?” he says. “Wildfires.”

“What—yes, they are, they’re super loud,” Scar says something that gets a little lost in interference, “you need to go now.”

Despite making the decision to go, Grian somehow feels rushed about it, like he said he was ready but he wasn’t actually ready. He stands up, and nearly stumbles back down again. When he goes to put a hand out to support him, it’s shaking. “Which way?” he whispers into the radio.

“Anywhere,” Scar says. “Um, down. I’m gonna—” he sounds distant like he’s leaning away from the radio’s mic again, and it occurs to Grian that this is what has been happening with his voice the whole time now. “—gonna try to see if I can relay your information to the hot shot crew. Like, uh, a nava—navi—whatever they’re called.”

Grian realizes, abruptly, that he has to leave his pack as well. There isn’t any way he can move quickly while carrying it, it’s far too heavy. He holds his radio, and looks out into the smoky air and trees. Then, pulled back by forces unseen, he looks back behind him. This place they’re located, it isn’t even a cave. It’s hardly an overhang, too. It wouldn’t have been a comfortable place to shelter.

He wants to say that he can’t leave again, because his boots might as well be filled with lead. But they’ve already had that argument, haven’t they? He made his decision to leave without even looking at Mumbo. It’s the least he could do to spare him the courtesy of looking at him now.

He lays his bag down closer to him. Then he pulls out his jacket and, carefully, gently, reverently, the closest he’s gotten to Mumbo so far, lays it over his head.

With tears slipping down his face, he steps back into the harsh warm light.

»»———-　　———-««

Grian fights his way down the hillside, and fight really does feel like the applicable word.

The first thing he has to do is a fair bit of boulder scrambling, since there was not, in fact, a good way down the cliff. It’s a maneuver that would have been greatly impeded by his backpack, so it’s a good thing he left it behind. Grian’s apathy actually does him favors for speed: he hops onto a rock he isn’t sure will hold him before testing it. He uses worse handholds in favor of spending more time finding safe ones. He doesn’t falter even when he slips; he leans into it instead. He’s down after only a few minutes, leaning on a tree, wheezing in the smoke, wishing he hadn’t abandoned his water bottle along with everything else.

The noise continues to rage around him.

Scar tells him to keep going down. Scar tells him that there is a temporary fire line at Sulphur Creek and that the hot shot crew is focused on manually digging a line on the other side of the valley. Scar tells him that they’re aware he’s trying to evacuate. Scar tells him it will be okay, because a lot of people are working on this now. Grian isn’t even sure where Sulphur Creek is. It’s not like he can see anything, after all.

“Run,” he says, “I’ll tell you where to go.”

Grian looks back up to where Mumbo is, and realizes he can’t see him either. It all blends into the rocks and bushes and trees. How was anyone supposed to have ever spotted him? His heart clenches at this, stuttering for just a moment. None of those helicopters would have been able to see him. People on the ground could barely see him. He’s being swallowed into nature again, a final resting place to entomb him.

Then, he glances up to the left and realizes that for the first time all day, and in fact all summer, he can see actual flames.

They’re weirdly beautiful. He watches them lick up around the trees, greedily eating up the brush. He fell down there earlier, and now everything he touched is being steadily converted to ash. He sees the flames in the tops of the trees forming bright halos. There’s little, if any, separation from the fire on the ground and the fire in the sky. Active crown fires are the most dangerous, he remembers. No wonder it’s so loud. How much combustion energy is happening right now, as these trees ignite?

He tells Scar.

Scar tells him in no uncertain terms that he needs to be going the opposite direction as fast as he can right about now. He urges him to run.

Grian obeys, but the heat and sound licks at his heels anyway.

How fast do wildfires run? How many miles can they cover in an hour? How many meters high can the flames go? The units mix in his head as he tries to work it out, but the calculations are mostly a background narration to the sound of his boots crunching gravel. Scar wants him to run, so he will.

He stays ahead of the fire, or at least he thinks he does, until suddenly a spark is thrown onto a tree in front of him. The needles, dry from weeks without rain, catch instantly. And Grian just…stops in his tracks, and watches it ignite. He watches the baby flame grow, greedily sucking in oxygen and new found fuel.

He thought he’d been going opposite the wind.

He can’t help but wonder if Mumbo felt like this. If he felt this same sudden door slamming shut in front of him, trapping him somewhere he had no hope of escaping by himself. If he had, when he’d found himself stuck and lost, had this realization that he wasn’t going to be able to make it out. The thought resonates through his body, aching in every part. It’s the fear. It’s the hopelessness.

Grian can’t outrun this anymore.

He goes to call Scar on the radio, to ask him for any advice or even to just talk to him again, but when he presses the button on the radio it does nothing. He presses it, again and again and again, but there’s nothing. No lights. No transmissions.

It’s dead, because he didn’t bother to charge it since before he left for the District Ranger’s Station, three days ago.

“Idiot,” he mutters to himself, “idiot, idiot, idiot!” He hits the button again and again and again, as if that’ll somehow work. Then, he hits the entire radio hard into his other hand, hard, as if he’ll shake and abuse the thing into submission, but it still doesn’t work. The screen is black. The lights don’t turn on.

The fire is even louder now, and even hotter. It’s howling. He’s losing his sense of direction. The trees and rocks around him are only shadowy figures in the smoke.

And maybe, in his deepest thoughts and miseries, Grian doesn’t want to live. Maybe, if you asked him, he’d say that he was fine with this, because there was nothing left for him here. There is no Mumbo, so there is no point. He’s okay with that—at least, he’d say he was okay with it if there were anyone around in the world to ask. But there’s Scar listening in on a dead radio miles away, who can’t even know if he’s safe right now, or why he isn’t responding anymore. And there’s something deep within Grian that isn’t his dark thoughts, something written into his very cells, that pushes him to look for shelter anyway.

Because he’s scared. Because this is a truly terrible way to die.

The only things around him are rocks and more trees. He goes for the rocks. Instinctively, they feel like a more solid option: surely something that’s already millions of years old can survive another million years.

He finds a spot beneath a boulder, and wedges himself as close as possible between it and the ground. It lies between the fire and him, but his eyes already burn so badly it might as well already be here. He pulls his shirt up so that it covers his nose and mouth, but that does little, so he tucks his head in near the ground, near the rock, like it’ll be protected in this tiny space he’s carved out of nothing. He inhales dirt anyway.

He screws his eyes shut, as if it’ll help, and waits.

It isn’t hard to tell when it’s here.

Everything feels like eternity. When he tries to breathe, there’s nothing there—no air at all to fill his lungs. Instead, everything is hot and stuffy, suffocating, astringent, wringing all the oxygen from the air. His chest burns like he’s being squeezed. It makes his head feel funny, his thoughts slipping right out before he can register them. The heat is overwhelming. It’s like being baked in an oven. It’s like the first time he got a sunburn as a child, his mother wringing her hands in dismay and guilt over his face. It’s like he’s being strangled and peeled and stripped and decimated at once.

He wonders if maybe the concept of hell was just written up by someone who’d walked through fire themselves.

It feels like it’s been hours, but eventually the white-hot heat fades into something warm and passive. It can’t have been hours, because he’s still here and feeling all of it. Grian twitches his foot, and then tries to curl in on himself afterward. The movement seems to trigger something in his body, something that says I’m not dead yet so now it’s your problem, and he begins to cough again, violent motions that shake every part of his being. He coughs for a while, choking on the ash and lack of air, before finally controlling it enough to breathe. His nose and throat feel raw.

He opens an eye. It immediately waters in the presence of thick smoke and heat, so he closes it again, the feeling burning hot beneath his lid. His cheeks are sticky with the feeling of tears from his watering eyes that dried just as quickly as they were produced. His teeth are gritty, even though he never even remembers opening his mouth. He runs a tongue over them, tasting the char. Every minute change of facial expression causes the grit to rub against his teeth.

A few minutes later, he stirs again, this time pushing himself up off the ground in one motion until he is sitting up—he’s not a quitter like that.

The world spins for a moment, and then swings back into place.

He opens his eyes again, looks at his hands. They’re red, but not badly burned. Of course, how would he know that? How would he be able to tell? He clenches them once, twice, three times, and his fingers stiffly and painfully move to obey him. The rock next to him is singed and blackened. The vegetation immediately next to him is sparse, but burned completely through. The pine needles are gone. The area is thick with dark smoke. Somewhere ahead of him, the air glows orange still, a beaming, glowing beacon in the gathering darkness of evening.

He’s…

Still here.

On the other side of the fire.

Alive.

Alone.

His brain works sluggishly, taking several moments to take in the information around him before it computes. Then, without any ceremony, he bursts into ugly tears. Or, there would be tears, if tears were falling from his eyes. He’s so dehydrated now that nothing is being produced anymore. Instead he just sits there, sobs wracking his body, taking deep gulping breaths of dry, dry air that keep his already sore throat rubbed raw. He cries until he’s too tired to do it anymore, and everything is just rough and painful.

Some people would rather be brave. They’d rather face each challenge head on, and not let it get to them. They’d rather never cry in order to save face.

But Grian? Grian just wants it all to stop. Who does he have to be brave for? He wants to not have to deal with this anymore. He wants to be safe. He wants his best friend to be safe. He wants his best friend to be alive. He wants someone, a real person, to place a hand on his shoulder and tell him he’s okay, it’ll be alright. It won’t be alright, of course, but he wants to be told that. It’ll make things, at least, a little easier.

He’s tired of it being hard. He’s so, so, tired of it being hard.

Grian stands finally. It takes a lot of energy to do so, and there’s a faint feeling of pain that radiates through his body like a high fever, coming in waves every time he moves. His fingers smart as they brush the fabric of his pants, the barest hint of a touch sending needles along his nerves. At least he’s got nerves.

The forest is gray.

The greenness is gone, and what has settled in its wake is white and gray ash. There’s a still, grim curtain that hangs over everything. There is no sound except the fire’s roar—not even a single bird. Grian pushes the dirt with his boot a little, and everything crumbles and flakes apart into fine dust. A glowing ember is uncovered beneath it. It looks vibrant against the pale death of all his other surroundings.

The bottom of his feet feel hot. These boots will be trashed by the time he gets back. He’s sure their rubber soles are all messed up now. He’ll have to buy a new pair.

The real meaning of the thought hits him just a moment after. When he gets back. Like he’s already accepted that it’s part of his plan, that he’s going to leave here. And then what? He doesn’t really know but…he’s going to have to get back. He will.

He heads toward the fire line.

He isn’t sure where it is, but the fire being in front of him now affords him the time to make mistakes. Down is still the best direction to head, so he goes that way, kicking up fine ash and dust as he goes. The trees are blackened husks, rising into the sky. Some of them still have leaves at the top, but some were less fortunate. All the ground brush has been burned away.

The forest looks like a wasteland. He knows it’ll be green again in a year.

It doesn’t actually take that long for him to walk into an unburned area. He wonders if this is a mosaic, like Scar taught him all those weeks ago, but he doesn’t find another burned area just beyond this. It’s full of green trees. He can hear the distant roar of the fire, but now he can hear birds again, too.

It’s twilight when he sees movement in the forest ahead of him, and he squints to identify it. He steps a little closer and—yeah, it’s a person. It’s another person. It’s actually another person out here, dressed in eye-shocking yellow.

He raises a hand, and starts to call out to them, but he doesn’t make any sound. His throat is completely hoarse. He’s not sure he could make a sound if he tried.

The person spots him anyway. The next few events sort of blur in his memory. The other man shouts something to his colleagues, whom Grian hadn’t seen in the trees around him. They call someone over to him. They say something to Grian. He doesn’t respond. They ask if he’s Grian, and he nods. They tell him that someone on the radio had said to be on the lookout for him. They give him water. They assess his injuries.

Grian thinks he’s fine, but they seem to think otherwise.

He’s still standing. His heart is still beating. That’s more than he can say of Mumbo. The thought of it makes him want to crumple and curl into a tiny ball, but he stays standing still. As long he’s upright, he’s okay.

“Martinez is going to walk you out,” one of them says and Grian nods. Martinez is a guy with a kind-looking face and broad shoulders. He doesn’t even seem phased by the idea of saving a stupid civilian who got caught out in all this mess. He looks like it’d be his pleasure to help Grian out.

This plan does not, for some reason, happen. Maybe it’s because Grian stumbles when they try to make him walk again, his ankle that he fell on hours earlier finally deciding to revolt. Maybe it’s his utter exhaustion. Maybe it’s because one of the wildland firefighters is especially concerned about Grian’s breathing, and the way his chest sounds funny. Maybe it’s his cough. Maybe it’s because he can barely speak to them, only hoarsely answering their simple questions.

Night falls fully while they talk it over. The sky is dark, no stars, all blocked out from smoke, but a glow still sits on the horizon. Most of the other members of the hotshot crew have moved on, continuing their jobs in the noble quest to keep the fire from spreading to this side of the valley.

Grian hears the radio crackle at various intervals, but none of the voices talking are Scar’s. At first he strains to try to hear him, trying to listen with his entire body. He hears nothing but strangers. His own radio is heavy in his pocket. It’s just a paperweight right now.

The firefighters are probably giving information about him to someone else back at the dispatch office. They’re probably asking for some outside evaluation on what his condition is, or an order on what to do next. He zones out while they speak. He finds it difficult to care about anything else that happens to him now, least of all to him.

Instead, two of them—Martinez included—walk him to a meadow, and tell him that one of the helicopters is going to pick him up and take him back to town.

“It’s the fastest way to get you back, that’s all,” Martinez says brightly. He keeps trying to cheer Grian up, which is sweet of him, but failing. “Don’t worry about it, it’ll be fun!”

“I think we have different definitions of fun,” Grian rasps.

He doesn’t tell them about Mumbo. Right now it feels like his own little burden to carry, an anchor suspended around his neck for him and him alone to drag. He’ll have to tell someone, as soon as he’s back in town. He’s sure that Scar has already told someone. But right now, at this moment, he carries the weight by himself. Alone. One last private moment with it all, waiting in the dark meadow with two strangers.

He closes his eyes.

He thinks about the first time he and Mumbo met, when they were not even preteens yet. Grian was a new kid in a new school and a new town, and mad at everything in his life. Mumbo was the partner his teacher assigned for him to work on a project with. But more importantly, Mumbo was kind.

He thinks about evenings spent at Mumbo’s house, or the times they spent roaming around the town doing errands for Grian’s mom. He thinks about the time they both got detention because Mumbo—not Grian!—had a terrible plan to prank one of their teachers. He thinks about the miserable two years that they went to different colleges that led into a purposeful coordination of which university they would study at. He thinks about the emptiness of their apartment the week they arrived in Colorado, and how they ate takeout together while sitting on the boxes.

The helicopter arrives some indeterminate time later, and Grian blinks his eyes back open to rushing wind chapping his face and lips. The noise is loud, but it’s not as loud as the fire was. Nothing will ever be greater than that sound. He’ll never forget that sound.

The firefighters bid him farewell. He only knows one of their names, but he waves back. He’s taken into the helicopter.

As it takes off, he looks through the window straight past a woman who is talking to him, but he isn’t able to see the forest like he anticipated. This forest, this wilderness he’s spent half a summer living in, isn’t visible. Instead the total darkness of night wipes it into a blank slate of inky blackness, punctuated only by the Nitwit Fire in the distance. No other lights.

Miles and miles of nothing, and Mumbo.

<< Chapter Ten | Masterpost | Chapter Twelve >>

#grian #goodtimeswithscar #hermitcraft fanfic #hermitcraft #hermitcraft au #quara fanfic #hc_firewatch_au #ummmmm. 0.0 dont kill me

33 notes · View notes