☼ RUTH OF HOUSE IESHAN ☼רות
"the absent woman / the transparent woman / the absinthe woman / the woman absorbed, the woman under tyranny / the contemporary woman / the mocking woman / the artist dreaming inside her house."
"the absent woman / the transparent woman / the absinthe woman / the woman absorbed, the woman under tyranny / the contemporary woman / the mocking woman / the artist dreaming inside her house."
I left the hospital early today.
I left the hospital early today, and I spent what felt like an hour attempting to scrub all the scent of it off my coat; the blood, and the sick, and the cleaning fluids. I don’t know if it worked or not. I feel like I can still smell it – I feel like I can still taste it on my tongue, as though I never actually left. If there is one thing that I can say about my work, it is that it follows me home like a starving dog after scraps.
I left the hospital early today because I needed to search for herbs in Terrastella, and it is a decent walk between the Day Court and the swamps of Terrastella. Ishak grumbled about it a bit, but he followed me in the end, as always – he phrased it as a failure to comprehend why I was tasked with the grunt work of collecting herbs, but I know that the truth of the matter is that he doesn’t like leaving the desert during the winter. (He has never built up any tolerance for the cold.) Nearly as soon as dawn broke over the edge of the horizon, we were off across the Mors, towards the Eleutheria; it is almost pointlessly dangerous to cross the mountains during the winter, and Ishak has already complained enough about our seasonal pilgrimage to Veneror.
It is mid-afternoon when we finally arrive in Terrastella, and that means that we will be staying the night in the court. (I had already expected that, but Ishak does look unhappy about it; I suppose he’s finally decided that he prefers my family to the cold.) I make for the swamp almost immediately. Even in the winter, there are certain rare, hardy herbs growing within it, if you are willing to brave the murky, muddy, and often fog-covered heart of it to find them. I am, fortunately – or unfortunately, if you believe my guard -, not easily cowed. When I proceed down the narrow, winding, Ilati-worn paths that run through the wooded depths of the swamp like a spiral of ants, it is without caution or hesitation.
(If part of that is because I know that Ishak will keep me from getting lost, that is beside the point.)
When I finally settle to collect a patch of wild ginger roots I’ve found growing around the trunk of a half-decayed tree, I am largely alone. Ishak is – somewhere. Close enough to hear me if I scream, at any rate. (There are stories of creatures that live in Terrastella that can kill you before you even have the chance to react, but I have never been whimsical enough to believe them.) I scrape at the muddy earth with my hooves; in the wet soil, it is enough to uncover the pale shape of the roots, which I pull out by my teeth.
They don’t smell like the hospital. Out here, I can nearly forget the scent of antiseptic – and maybe that is why I always volunteer to collect herbs, even though I don’t need to.
I am always between one sterile birdcage and another.
@Saphira || our first thread.....in Thirty years... || anne waldman, "fast talking woman"
I left the hospital early today, and I spent what felt like an hour attempting to scrub all the scent of it off my coat; the blood, and the sick, and the cleaning fluids. I don’t know if it worked or not. I feel like I can still smell it – I feel like I can still taste it on my tongue, as though I never actually left. If there is one thing that I can say about my work, it is that it follows me home like a starving dog after scraps.
I left the hospital early today because I needed to search for herbs in Terrastella, and it is a decent walk between the Day Court and the swamps of Terrastella. Ishak grumbled about it a bit, but he followed me in the end, as always – he phrased it as a failure to comprehend why I was tasked with the grunt work of collecting herbs, but I know that the truth of the matter is that he doesn’t like leaving the desert during the winter. (He has never built up any tolerance for the cold.) Nearly as soon as dawn broke over the edge of the horizon, we were off across the Mors, towards the Eleutheria; it is almost pointlessly dangerous to cross the mountains during the winter, and Ishak has already complained enough about our seasonal pilgrimage to Veneror.
It is mid-afternoon when we finally arrive in Terrastella, and that means that we will be staying the night in the court. (I had already expected that, but Ishak does look unhappy about it; I suppose he’s finally decided that he prefers my family to the cold.) I make for the swamp almost immediately. Even in the winter, there are certain rare, hardy herbs growing within it, if you are willing to brave the murky, muddy, and often fog-covered heart of it to find them. I am, fortunately – or unfortunately, if you believe my guard -, not easily cowed. When I proceed down the narrow, winding, Ilati-worn paths that run through the wooded depths of the swamp like a spiral of ants, it is without caution or hesitation.
(If part of that is because I know that Ishak will keep me from getting lost, that is beside the point.)
When I finally settle to collect a patch of wild ginger roots I’ve found growing around the trunk of a half-decayed tree, I am largely alone. Ishak is – somewhere. Close enough to hear me if I scream, at any rate. (There are stories of creatures that live in Terrastella that can kill you before you even have the chance to react, but I have never been whimsical enough to believe them.) I scrape at the muddy earth with my hooves; in the wet soil, it is enough to uncover the pale shape of the roots, which I pull out by my teeth.
They don’t smell like the hospital. Out here, I can nearly forget the scent of antiseptic – and maybe that is why I always volunteer to collect herbs, even though I don’t need to.
I am always between one sterile birdcage and another.
@Saphira || our first thread.....in Thirty years... || anne waldman, "fast talking woman"
HE FEEDS ME RED MEAT / HE WATCHES THE BLOOD POOL IN MY MOUTHlaughs at my red teeth❂please tag Ruth! contact is encouraged, short of violence
