It felt like… he wasn’t sure exactly. Like being hugged by a relative that you used to be close to but had forgotten. The kind that was both soft and warm and smelled like soap and perfume and blank places in your memory that things should have gone, but didn’t anymore, their edges fuzzed out into soft blurs of old emotion left over by time. It felt like that. It also felt… it felt like that tense, held-breath awareness that he’d felt standing at the mouth of the alley before his crook had appeared.

This place, in spite of having clearly taken a beating from time felt… alive, but fragile. Fragile like he’d been when he woke up back on his own body. Was that it? That this place’s soul had come home to it, after a dry, withering wait? Was it –him-? It was Nether Wallop, it was –his- wonder. A little piece of earth that maybe belonged to him less than he to it.

It was green, more or less, but it was a wild, brambly green, with thistles that made short work of his tunic and breeches. Even his boots were a very mild impediment to the number of thistle spikes that sunk into him when he moved, and he cursed, using the butt of his crook to flatten the thick grass and dry thistles in his path like the most ineffective scythe in history. Brambles too, aggressive and snagging and trying to trip him as he picked his way forward without a clear idea where he was going, just that he out to explore while he was here. Aside from the brambles and prickles, which left little red bleeding pin points when he pulled them out, the place didn’t seem to be dangerous.

It sort of reminded him of untended fields he’d played in when he was a kid, but this place had been untended for a lot longer than they had. He didn’t even see any buildings, not from here anyway, though somehow he had an picture in his mind that maybe there’d been herds here once. Or maybe it was just that it looked as though there ought to have been herds here once. It was fertile enough, if you disregarded the ridiculous number of prickles.

Or the delightful way you forgot, spending a lot of time in the city, that enough tall grass and prickles could hide a dip on the hill like it had a sense of humor and time to build a trap, and as much as they tangled you up and stabbed you on the way down, none of them did a whole lot to slow you down when you cursed, tripped, and rolled like an idiot down the slope.

And by the time he was flat on his back in a slightly marshy patch by the edge of a brook, soaking wet and covered in more ripped vegetation than he cared to talk about, he was deeply glad he hadn’t invited Lucas along after all.

“Ok… so… ow.” He grumbled.

He’d dropped his crook somewhere on the roll down, and rather than look for it he just summoned it back. As a weapon it might not be fantastic, but it was kind of comforting to have in his hands, even if it felt dry and old, like something you dug out from a forgotten, cobwebbed corner of an old barn. Tools of such age you might be able to hang it on a wall but not really use.

Old like the glimpse of ivy covered broken plaster and field stone that he could barely pick out from the overgrowth on it. The roof beams were still there, but the roof had been gone for so long that the ivy trailed like decorative garlands down into the building, and the windows were shuttered in sagging shutters that looked like they’d fall off if he so much as gave a strong sneeze in their direction.

“Oh well. Great.” He ran his fingers over the back of his neck, grimaced, and tossed aside a broken thorny twig. “…Let’s go see if anyone’s home.”


There was a door, sagging on its crude hinge, and shedding scales of peeling pigments that had once, as far as he could tell, been a bright, cheerful blue, with hints of green, and red, and yellow. It was no longer clear enough to guess what patterns it might have made, but it felt like it had been cheerful once. This whole place must have been cheerful once, but right now it was just tired. The insides of the cabin was like the door. There were sagging beams that he was nervous to walk underneath, with rough nails sticking out of them, and frayed, gray twine in weary loops, some with bits of dusty, crumbled leaf or stem still stuck to them, but even in this unusually untouched place, they hadn’t been able to hold together better than that. A table slumped drunkenly against it’s equally inebriated two chairs, all flaking colorful paint like the door. An overturned clay mug had rolled to the ground and broken in half, and there were others hanging up on rusty nails, covered in dust. Cabinets, a huge contraption he thought might have been a lomb, but he was just guessing, based on the shape and the mostly missing strings. A spinning wheel. Part of the rafters had been built into a loft that drooped like a cartoon of a swaybacked horse, with a broken bed that looked like the only thing that had bedded down there for lifetimes were mice and birds, if that. It didn’t smell mouse infested though, everything just smelled like dry leaves, and sun baked dirt, all of it perfumed by the smell of crushed thistle and mud he’d tracked in with him.

Something shifted slightly, and rough grainy bits of… he wasn’t sure, fell down into the space below the loft, rattling off battered old cabinets he didn’t know that he’d have peered into even if he wasn’t sure the entire loft would come down on his head if he tried.

“I… don’t get it.” He admitted to the empty space. “What am I supposed to do with this? I mean... “

It had seemed so important when he’d come here, but what was he supposed to do? This place was… relevant. It was… his… but… he didn’t know what to do with it any more than he knew what to do with the crook, and he sat down gingerly on the floor in defeat, angrily plucking long spikes of thistle out of his clothing and skin, glaring at the small bright red beads that formed in their wake.

“I mean if I’m supposed to fix this place up, you could gimme… I duno. A Hammer. Or a… a scythe. Or a weed whacker. Some boards or something. I can get nails. I helped build a ******** chicken coop once. I mean that’s something right? But no I get a crook.”

It was… exhaustively confusing. This mix of feelings, the need to come here, the need to pick up the crook… the sense that these things were his and yet. Maybe he should go back. Maybe he should ask Mercy. Maybe she’d know what this place was supposed to mean to him.

It was… it was beautiful, and his, like his body was his when he'd woken back up again, tired and fragile...

But he didn’t know anything past that. Was he supposed to try and live here or something? His dad would lose it. The chickens might like it, but ******** trying to find eggs constantly in the prickle labyrinth.

“Man wouldn’t that be nice though. One rent controlled… uh. Shack.” He leaned over and slid the broken cup closer to him, dumping a small collection of thistle spines and briars into the broken curve of it.

“Great. Welcome home me.”

He wasn’t sure this was any better than being at home, avoiding making eye contact with his father, or talking about the coma.

At least there was a quiet place to return to.

He shrugged out of the tartan wrap around his shoulders, picking prickles out of it and dropping it on the ground beside him, suddenly tired, suddenly not wanting to go back home. Lucas was there. Boudica and the hens were there...but so was Mary’s grave and so was his father… and he just wanted to sleep.

He closed his eyes for a second, and just for that brief time, he could imagine climbing up the little shallow steps to the loft, and throwing himself onto the mattress of the bed. He could imagine how it would feel, a little stiffer than he'd have liked, but padded down with sheep skins and blankets, and just… sleeping. Deep, dreamless sleep, in a little house with a grass covered roof, herbs drying in the rafters, and a flock in the fields.


Flock in the…

He opened his eyes and rubbed them, blinking as though trying to shake off a weight. Sunlight was still drifting in through the open roof, but maybe a little dimmer now. He was still wet, maybe a bit less so, and the mud was starting to dry in patches on his clothes, but it was still a ruin. A place as tired as he was.

“...Yeah I don’t think you’re getting that any time soon… sorry.” He addressed the room, forcing himself to his feet, scooping up the wrap off the floor beside him, running his thumb over the circle and cross. “Look I’ll… be back.” He promised the silent place, not sure if he would have felt better or worse if there had been something like a response. “But I can’t stay here tonight.” Not after everything. His father would be screaming at people at the police station, sure he was dead, or back in a coma. He didn’t think he loved the man, not as such, not when he’d seen the man ruin his own marriage. (Who the hell would cheat with a man who looked like they did anyway?) but they were like the damn table and chair. Broken as hell but holding each other up until they gave up and fell down. “I’ll come back.” He promised again. “...I’ll figure this out.”


(1700+ words)