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

[arenaria]

[finaldiscussion]

Strat smiles.

[arenaria]

"I guess if it was sixty or seventy years ago it's surprising you remember me at all. Let alone anything I said."

[finaldiscussion]

"I have a very good memory."

[arenaria]

"That's lucky," Shell sighs. "If nice things happened to me that would be a nice thing I'd want, a really, really good memory..."

[finaldiscussion]

The kettle clicks. Strat provides tea.

[arenaria]

Shell drinks it, in slow little sips, wrapping both hands around the cup.

"...This seems like... a thing that can happen. The same way 'Sherlock' sounds like a name. Did you give me tea before?"

[finaldiscussion]

"Yes."

[arenaria]

"It's good," says Shell. "Thank you."

Sip. Sip.

"I wonder if I could get anywhere at remembering things by finding out what other things seem like things that can happen. I wonder if that's reliable or if I'd just wind up believing the silly stories I made up to make myself feel better when Voice had me. There were a lot. They all contradict each other."

[finaldiscussion]

He shrugs. "I don't have much experience with that kind of reconstruction."

[arenaria]

"I know I wanted paper very badly at one point, or I don't suppose I'd care so much now."

[finaldiscussion]

He nods.

[arenaria]

"I wonder what I did. I wonder who I was. I can't even remember if Shell is actually my name or not. Did I tell you my name before?"

[finaldiscussion]

"Shell sounds about right."

[arenaria]

"Okay," says Shell, brightening. "That's good then."

Eventually tea is consumed, and Shell has reread her residential code enough times to commit to memory as long as nothing traumatic happens in the meantime.

Shell gets up to go.

And stops.

"I am very, very afraid now and I don't know why," she murmurs, "but I don't want to leave here alone."

[finaldiscussion]

"I'll come with you," he says.

[arenaria]

"Thank you."

Shell passed the station on her way through this neighborhood, and goes back that way now. She can't remember ever using one before, though she's sure she has, but the interface isn't too complicated.

She feels it is very important to be exacting in typing in her res code.

She starts over twice, to make sure.

When she's sure she has it right, and she's memorized the path from station to her residence, they travel.

[finaldiscussion]

Strat observes her exactness, but doesn't comment on it.

[arenaria]

Her apartment is cluttered. Every surface has something on it. Some surfaces have large stacks of things. Her shelves are full of books, and her kitchenette is overflowing with food and pots and pans, and her bed is heaped with clothes, and there is all manner of miscellany hiding her carpet.

"I guess stuff just keeps accumulating if no one's home," observes Shell, tilting her head.

[finaldiscussion]

"Yes," says Strat. "Would you like help organizing the debris?"

[arenaria]

"Yes. And if you see anything you want, tell me, you've - you're the reason I can get at any of it at all."

She nudges things aside to make a path across the little apartment to her bed and starts sorting through the heap of fabric, holding things up against herself to see if they'll fit her or not.

[finaldiscussion]

Many of them won't. Some will, though.

Strat steps inside and closes the door.

[arenaria]

Presently Shell has acquired a small heap of new outfits for herself, and a larger heap of things she will have to trade or give away, and she starts busying herself with what's on the floor, trying on shoes and evaluating knicknacks and finding space between the books and the edges of their shelves to temporarily stash things. When she's got the pile of assorted purses, lightbulbs, and throw pillows cleared from in front of her nightstand, she peers into the drawers, finds and snorts at the crown without a trace of recognition, and puts it back its drawer along with the nicest purse and a few other potentially useful odds-and-ends. She starts using the purses as sorting containers for smaller objects.

She has not eaten anything in a few years, and, conveniently enough, Downside is not a place in which spoilage occurs. Once her recent torch is far enough in the past for her to be noticeably hungry, and once there are paths between all key locations in her little apartment, she walks through the path leading to the kitchenette and looks for something edible in its current form. She finds a ham sandwich, which she wolfs down, and goes back to the accumulated items. She sorts through the books that have appeared on her shelf, and divides them between "keep" and "read once, then trade away" - the latter form a group of stacks just beside her bed.

[finaldiscussion]

Strat, meanwhile, helps keep the paths clear and passes her interesting things he spots amidst the junk, with comments like "valuable to collectors" (a watergun) and "I expect you'll want this" (a blank spiral-bound notebook).

[arenaria]

"Thank you," says Shell each time. "I'm going to have to have a - the word I want to use is estate sale but that's obviously the wrong word. I'll lay stuff out on the street on a blanket, I guess."