downside

[arenaria]

Voice lets her go.

Shell doesn't know how long it's been. She doesn't know where she is. She doesn't know how to get home, or if she has one.

She stands on Voice's doorstep. She blinks slowly at the brightness.

She walks in a random direction.

Downsiders aren't big on charity. It's not like it's going to kill her if she doesn't get help. It's not like she's unfamiliar with the effects of dehydration and hunger; Voice didn't always remember to take good care of the pet in the basement. Shell walks, and when she's tired she lies down on the ground and sleeps, and when she wakes up she walks, and every few days she curls up on the ground, waits to torch from thirst, and then gets up and goes on.

She doesn't count the number of times this happens. It doesn't matter.

She walks. She has nightmares. She walks.

On an unremarkable day on an unremarkable street after unremarkable stretches of years, she feels herself cross a telltale threshold of dizziness and headache: she cannot make significant forward progress towards Not Where She Is Currently Located until she torches or (less likely) someone gives her a lot of water. It's possible she'll be able to sleep through this torch. She sits. She leans on a wall. She should probably pick up the next sharp object she finds. Maybe a piece of broken glass will present itself. Then she can skip these parts.

She sits, and she closes her eyes, and she waits. If the buildings around her would ever have seemed familiar, they don't now.

Comments

[finaldiscussion]

It may become apparent that someone is standing over her.

[arenaria]

She can still open her eyes. She looks up. But she's well past talking. She doesn't have any saliva left.

[finaldiscussion]

"Do you need a torch?" he inquires kindly.

[arenaria]

"Mm."

[finaldiscussion]

He departs.

He returns half a minute later, with a knife.

[arenaria]

Shell leans her head back for him. People sometimes offer to torch her when she's like this. So far no one's let her hold the weapon.

[finaldiscussion]

He might have offered it to her, but he's not entirely sure she could hold it if he did. So he saves either of them the trouble of finding out.

[arenaria]

Shell closes her eyes and doesn't-have-the-water-content-to-whimper when the knife bites, and opens them when she's through torching. She licks her lips. "Thank you," she murmurs.

(This is the part where he walks away, or wants to hear her life story and walks away when it's what it is, or takes her home with him and hurts her for a few hours and then lets her go because most people aren't Voice. She is almost curious which it is.)

[finaldiscussion]

It is not any of those parts.

It is the part where he says: "Would you like some tea?"

[arenaria]

Tea. Tea. Shell's vocabulary is a little rusty, but Voice did talk to her, she's overheard this and that in all her walking. Tea is a beverage.

"I would love some tea," she says.

And she gets up.

[finaldiscussion]

Strat leads her into his house, and puts the kettle on, and sits down at his kitchen table, and invites her to do the same.

[arenaria]

She sits.

"I'm Shell," she says after a moment.

[finaldiscussion]

"And I'm Strat. And it seems to me I've seen you before."

[arenaria]

"I'm sorry," she says, folding her hands on the table and looking at them. "I don't remember you. I don't remember anything from before - some time ago."

[finaldiscussion]

"What do you remember?"

[arenaria]

"Someone loved me once," Shell says automatically. (She repeats this to herself in her thoughts, constantly. It is the only thing before Voice. It is the only important thing.) "I died, I guess, but that's not something I remember, only something that must have happened. I must have been going from somewhere to somewhere else. And then a torturer who I never got a look at and never introduced themselves but I called them Voice in my head found me. And I don't know how long Voice had me. It was a long time. And then they let me go. And I don't know where I reside anymore. So I just walk."

[finaldiscussion]

"One moment," he says, and he gets up from the table and goes into another room and brings back a small scrap of paper.

"I believe this is yours."

[arenaria]

She looks at it.

It doesn't look exactly like her handwriting, but maybe if her hands didn't shake so much -

"Is it?" she asks. "Was I here once?" Pause. "A residence. Residences accumulate food - and have running water - and I have one. That's - good."

It has been a long time since anything unambiguously good has happened to her. Even Voice releasing her required that Voice catch her in the first place.

[finaldiscussion]

"You were here once, and you left me that. And when I went to visit you, there was no sign of you anywhere."

[arenaria]

"- Do you know how long ago that was?"

[finaldiscussion]

"Around sixty or seventy years."

[arenaria]

That doesn't sound far off the mark to Shell, not that she's been paying attention. She nods once. "I don't remember the place," she says, looking at the paper. "But I guess it's mine." She pauses. "Someone loved me once, I wonder if they made me a nice place."

[finaldiscussion]

"I expect that they did."

[arenaria]

"I wish I could remember who it was."

[finaldiscussion]

"You knew someone named Sherlock," he offers. "But you didn't mention anything else about them, so it might not be the same person."