Febris
After this.
There’s only so much you can run, before it catches up with you, before you can’t force your way through the stitches in your side and the tremors in your legs. Martine’s just done this enough that she’s in her room by then, sweaty and trembling on the narrow floor.
She’s so hot, and she manages to squirm out of her dress, screaming body be damned. She twists against the floor like a worm, whining softly.
Like a fever, not a fire, sticky and damp where she wants either crisp living cold or dry hungry heat. Martine tries to wipe the sweat out of her eyes, but her hands are just as bad, clinging salty dying wet and she wants it off.
*
Later, when she’s moped up the sweat and most of the blood from her split lip with the edge of her dress and crawled onto her bunk to lie on her side, Martine carefully makes a fist of her left hand to test the ache.
It’s not so bad, she judges, drawing up her heavy legs. Not so bad at all.
The heat has settled under her skin, nesting in her bones and spread like a spider web across her ribs. It flutters with her breath, splattering the top of her mouth and lying heavy on her cheekbones. She uncurls her hand and lets it fall in front of her face, staring calmly at the point where the skin-suit stops and her own skin begins.
There’s something low and sinuous between her spine and her navel, coils tucked in all the loose empty spaces, but she’s not ready to pull it up and look it in the eyes yet, so it rests with her
*
The ship breathes.
In and out, drawing air to and fro. Rhythm.
Martine has a beat, it marches on through her body in waves and ripples and tides. Fills her up with red, painting the underside of her skin. If she tugged her face off she knows what she’d find below.
Sticks. Bloody, naked twigs and teeth scattered all between, glinting.
She never wanted them, but they came all the same - the teeth and blood.
*
No one should think like that, so Martine gathers up her dream-story-head and tucks it away neatly.
Then she begins to consider the situation.
…It hurts (hurts and she wants her maman), but she is not going to die, and therefore she will stand up and go about her business sooner or later. Be a good girl with a calm eye and steady hands.
Martine curls up with her forehead on the wall and thinks cool thoughts, clean thoughts like river worn pebbles. Counts, a little, one to twenty and back again.
Fading, cooling, gathering at her lowest point - a dull, feverish ache, a certain lingering taste of salt, and…calm grief, if not acceptance, if not understanding.
She says his name, once, softly - Seymour - and starts cleaning up.
There’s only so much you can run, before it catches up with you, before you can’t force your way through the stitches in your side and the tremors in your legs. Martine’s just done this enough that she’s in her room by then, sweaty and trembling on the narrow floor.
She’s so hot, and she manages to squirm out of her dress, screaming body be damned. She twists against the floor like a worm, whining softly.
Like a fever, not a fire, sticky and damp where she wants either crisp living cold or dry hungry heat. Martine tries to wipe the sweat out of her eyes, but her hands are just as bad, clinging salty dying wet and she wants it off.
*
Later, when she’s moped up the sweat and most of the blood from her split lip with the edge of her dress and crawled onto her bunk to lie on her side, Martine carefully makes a fist of her left hand to test the ache.
It’s not so bad, she judges, drawing up her heavy legs. Not so bad at all.
The heat has settled under her skin, nesting in her bones and spread like a spider web across her ribs. It flutters with her breath, splattering the top of her mouth and lying heavy on her cheekbones. She uncurls her hand and lets it fall in front of her face, staring calmly at the point where the skin-suit stops and her own skin begins.
There’s something low and sinuous between her spine and her navel, coils tucked in all the loose empty spaces, but she’s not ready to pull it up and look it in the eyes yet, so it rests with her
*
The ship breathes.
In and out, drawing air to and fro. Rhythm.
Martine has a beat, it marches on through her body in waves and ripples and tides. Fills her up with red, painting the underside of her skin. If she tugged her face off she knows what she’d find below.
Sticks. Bloody, naked twigs and teeth scattered all between, glinting.
She never wanted them, but they came all the same - the teeth and blood.
*
No one should think like that, so Martine gathers up her dream-story-head and tucks it away neatly.
Then she begins to consider the situation.
…It hurts (hurts and she wants her maman), but she is not going to die, and therefore she will stand up and go about her business sooner or later. Be a good girl with a calm eye and steady hands.
Martine curls up with her forehead on the wall and thinks cool thoughts, clean thoughts like river worn pebbles. Counts, a little, one to twenty and back again.
Fading, cooling, gathering at her lowest point - a dull, feverish ache, a certain lingering taste of salt, and…calm grief, if not acceptance, if not understanding.
She says his name, once, softly - Seymour - and starts cleaning up.