even chrononauts get the blues
Who: Una Persson and OPEN. People who haven't talked to her yet (or often) welcomed/encouraged. Multiple threads are a go!
What: A delayed meltdown.
Where: The CES.
When: A few days after Una's released from the infirmary.
Warnings: ANGST.
You could only keep it up for so long-the Scandinavian reserve or the English stiff upper lip or whatever it was in Una's makeup that allowed her to simply force her way through the pain, physical and emotional, of the flood's aftermath. Always focussing outward, always moving, never dwelling on anything: that was how you survived.
But the morning finally came when she couldn't find anything to focus on, nothing to move toward. She could have screamed, broken things, sobbed-but instead she packed herself a picnic lunch, rolled up a blanket, and headed up to the CES, alone.
She was expecting the usual generic woodland idyll and stopped in owlish, blinking astonishment at the sight of a high limestone cliff that was a dead ringer for Malham Cove. Turning, she saw the landscape fall away into what was for all intents and purposes the green of the Yorkshire Dales, as they must have looked at some time before humans settled there. She heard, from somewhere high above, the cry of a peregrine falcon.
She walked a little distance until she came to the edge of a clear cold stream, and there she unfolded her blanket and unpacked her lunch: a thermos of hot tea, cheese sandwiches, an apple. She sat down on the blanket. She poured tea. She took a bite of a sandwich. And then she bowed her head and began to cry.
What: A delayed meltdown.
Where: The CES.
When: A few days after Una's released from the infirmary.
Warnings: ANGST.
You could only keep it up for so long-the Scandinavian reserve or the English stiff upper lip or whatever it was in Una's makeup that allowed her to simply force her way through the pain, physical and emotional, of the flood's aftermath. Always focussing outward, always moving, never dwelling on anything: that was how you survived.
But the morning finally came when she couldn't find anything to focus on, nothing to move toward. She could have screamed, broken things, sobbed-but instead she packed herself a picnic lunch, rolled up a blanket, and headed up to the CES, alone.
She was expecting the usual generic woodland idyll and stopped in owlish, blinking astonishment at the sight of a high limestone cliff that was a dead ringer for Malham Cove. Turning, she saw the landscape fall away into what was for all intents and purposes the green of the Yorkshire Dales, as they must have looked at some time before humans settled there. She heard, from somewhere high above, the cry of a peregrine falcon.
She walked a little distance until she came to the edge of a clear cold stream, and there she unfolded her blanket and unpacked her lunch: a thermos of hot tea, cheese sandwiches, an apple. She sat down on the blanket. She poured tea. She took a bite of a sandwich. And then she bowed her head and began to cry.