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]

"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."

[finaldiscussion]

"A sound strategy."

[arenaria]

Shell sorts and heaps and consolidates. She finds a laundry basket, in the closet, and because it landed upside-down it is not already full; she fills it. She gazes exasperatedly at the things that appear in the spaces she's cleared; apparently apartments don't just fill up and then stop, they fill up and then become disgruntled about it.

Eventually, for a change of pace, she opens the door to the bathroom to see just how much shampoo she has now.

This door reveals no shampoo at all.

"- Oh," she breathes, because she can't remember the name of the place, can't remember what it is, did not until this moment remember that there was such a thing to have been forgotten, but this feels like a thing that can happen, and now it has. "Oh, oh, oh."

And the thing that has happened means: go inside. It is safe. It is better than where you are.

[finaldiscussion]

"There's a bit of luck," says Strat.

[arenaria]

"Oh," says Shell, and she doesn't so much walk through the door as lean through, like the bar is sunshine and she's a plant, not that Downside has plants.

Her fingertips catch on the edge of the door. "Are you coming?"

[finaldiscussion]

"I may as well."

[arenaria]

She holds the door for him, though she's trembling in place like she's holding herself back from hurtling forward and letting it fall back into its frame.

When she doesn't have to hold it anymore to let him by, she does go further into the bar.

But she can't remember what she used to do here - cannot actually call up a memory of being here at all. She only knows that it's safe here.

She turns in place, once she's far enough in to have a view, and drinks in the surroundings.

[finaldiscussion]

Srat watches her for a moment, then decides that she is probably all right and heads off to get a drink.

[arenaria]

Shell follows him when he passes her, and watches him order, but she's not hungry or thirsty right now so she doesn't copy him immediately. She wanders past tables, pausing sometimes to turn around and look at everything - the stars, the people, the stairwell, the back door, the people.

No one looks familiar, but they all look like people-who-can-be, even the people who don't look like anyone in Downside.

She must have been here before.

[manofmyword]

There's a table with a person at it! A person who definitely looks like he can be.

Also, he appears to recognize her.

"Hiya, smarty pants," he says amicably.

[arenaria]

She blinks at him.

"Did I know you once?" she asks slowly.

[manofmyword]

"Probably. Which one are you?"

[arenaria]

"...Which?" she says. "I'm called Shell."

[manofmyword]

"Are you now," he says, slow and thoughtful. "Where you from, Shell?"

[arenaria]

"Downside," she says. "I don't remember before that, but I assume I lived somewhere, before I died." She looks around her. "I might not go back, though."

[manofmyword]

"Why not?"

[arenaria]

"Oh, well - I might - but - it's not safe there, and I think it's safe here."

[manofmyword]

"It usually is," he agrees. "What's Downside like?"

[arenaria]

"It's..." She makes a vague gesture, and sits down at his table. "I never had to explain it before, what do you want to know? Everybody there is dead, there's that."

[manofmyword]

"Let's start with: what's the danger?"

[arenaria]

"Torturers," says Shell promptly. "Most of them if you catch their interest just hurt you for a few hours, maybe a day or two, and then let you go, but one kept me for much longer than that and I think that's why I can't remember anything. Even knowing how to fight doesn't do any good, they have this thing called torturers' control, they can make you move however they want unless you're a contractor. The one who kept me for all those years never actually touched me, not once."

She's had decades to process Voice, and while she would be very alarmed if anything about her situation suggested that Voice or anyone Voicelike was about to capture her again, she is not particularly alarmed to be merely describing the history. Not here, where it's safe; not when the door will lead back to her cluttered apartment, also relatively safe.

[manofmyword]

"I'm sorry," he murmurs sympathetically.

[arenaria]

"They let me go," Shell says. "And after I walked around for a while I even found someone I met before they got me, and he knew where I resided, so now I can go back there if I want. But I might stay here instead."

[manofmyword]

"Staying here's a good choice," he says. "Somebody I love got killed here once, but that's a special case."

[arenaria]

"Someone loved me once," sighs Shell dreamily, leaning her face on one hand.