Milliways, Room 101
Aug. 5th, 2013 11:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aaaaaaaagh_skySleep would be nice. Not knocked-out unconsciousness; proper sleep.
Ellen doesn't want to.
Here's the thing: she found the Mother Punga, like she said, and she found the seed pod and picked the seeds and got sprayed in the face, like she said. And when she came back to her feet none of anything was real. She knew something was wrong when she looked up at the trees and saw them in a thousand thousand layers of intricate detail and color that hadn't been there before. When the trails of light and ripples of distortion started following her hands through the air, she sat down to let it pass. She'd read about this kind of thing before- Dad taught her to read from his medical texts, after all- and it didn't seem like a good idea to go anywhere until it flushed out of her system.
She doesn't remember passing out. She knows she did, because one moment she was sitting and another moment she was lying on her back and... things... had happened. There was a dead man. No throat, no face. There was Dogmeat, covered in blood and nudging her side, and then jumping in joyful circles when he saw her wake. There was mud all over her armor and sore places in her back from sitting in one position in one swampy place for so long. There was a knife with blood on it and a saw without-
Things had happened. She doesn't remember them.
The thing is that she remembers other things that've happened to her. She's got scars only the doctors at the Citadel have ever seen. She... remembers getting those, sometimes. On the alien ship, the first time she woke up- the time she doesn't talk about because then she'd remember more. It's the kind of thing best acknowledged and moved on from. It's a wound, that memory, and you don't make wounds better by poking at them over and over to see if they've healed. Sometimes, though... sometimes that memory comes back. Not in nightmares. She could handle nightmares- they come, they pass, you wake up, you put them away. That memory comes at other times. Sometimes during the day, when she's doing her job. When she's butchering some hunted beast for meat, sometimes. When it happens she takes a breath and lets it pass. She can't do much else for it.
Sometimes it comes before she sleeps, and when it comes then it's clearer, vivider. And it doesn't always pass, then. It lingers.
Whatever happened in the swamp after the world went sparkly and bright, she doesn't remember. She has a vague hint or two around the edges- a figure talking in soothing words that sounded like rotting mirelurk, a monstrous black beast the size of a yao guai with a single burning blue eye, orange light spewing absolutely everywhere- but they waver and vanish almost the instant they arise.
She doesn't remember the rest. She doesn't remember the knife, either.
She'd really rather it stays that way.
But she's going to have to sleep, regardless of what comes welling out of her memory when she lies down; and anyway, when did the world ever care one bit whether she wanted a thing or not.
Ellen doesn't want to.
Here's the thing: she found the Mother Punga, like she said, and she found the seed pod and picked the seeds and got sprayed in the face, like she said. And when she came back to her feet none of anything was real. She knew something was wrong when she looked up at the trees and saw them in a thousand thousand layers of intricate detail and color that hadn't been there before. When the trails of light and ripples of distortion started following her hands through the air, she sat down to let it pass. She'd read about this kind of thing before- Dad taught her to read from his medical texts, after all- and it didn't seem like a good idea to go anywhere until it flushed out of her system.
She doesn't remember passing out. She knows she did, because one moment she was sitting and another moment she was lying on her back and... things... had happened. There was a dead man. No throat, no face. There was Dogmeat, covered in blood and nudging her side, and then jumping in joyful circles when he saw her wake. There was mud all over her armor and sore places in her back from sitting in one position in one swampy place for so long. There was a knife with blood on it and a saw without-
Things had happened. She doesn't remember them.
The thing is that she remembers other things that've happened to her. She's got scars only the doctors at the Citadel have ever seen. She... remembers getting those, sometimes. On the alien ship, the first time she woke up- the time she doesn't talk about because then she'd remember more. It's the kind of thing best acknowledged and moved on from. It's a wound, that memory, and you don't make wounds better by poking at them over and over to see if they've healed. Sometimes, though... sometimes that memory comes back. Not in nightmares. She could handle nightmares- they come, they pass, you wake up, you put them away. That memory comes at other times. Sometimes during the day, when she's doing her job. When she's butchering some hunted beast for meat, sometimes. When it happens she takes a breath and lets it pass. She can't do much else for it.
Sometimes it comes before she sleeps, and when it comes then it's clearer, vivider. And it doesn't always pass, then. It lingers.
Whatever happened in the swamp after the world went sparkly and bright, she doesn't remember. She has a vague hint or two around the edges- a figure talking in soothing words that sounded like rotting mirelurk, a monstrous black beast the size of a yao guai with a single burning blue eye, orange light spewing absolutely everywhere- but they waver and vanish almost the instant they arise.
She doesn't remember the rest. She doesn't remember the knife, either.
She'd really rather it stays that way.
But she's going to have to sleep, regardless of what comes welling out of her memory when she lies down; and anyway, when did the world ever care one bit whether she wanted a thing or not.