[travis touches her and shauna thinks of – nothing, she thinks of nothing, she doesn’t think about jeff or jackie or melissa or the woods or the cabin or or or she doesn’t, she looks up at travis with his shifting expressions and all she can think of is trudging past his shelter to take her turn on watch (the wolves, always the wolves, always the scars on van’s face and the sight of her teeth through her cheek, someone has to keep watch to protect the animals, someone has to make sure they make it through the winter) and seeing travis’s callused hands clutching javi’s carving in his sleep.
shauna tips her face upwards, eyes glassy, face solemn, then reaches up her free hand, the hand that holds the knife, the hand that splits flesh from bone, the hand that feeds her family in the wilderness, her family that looks at her like a feral animal, like an approaching storm, like a vengeful god. her family that hates her. she touches his cheek, thumb finding the jut of bone, thinking about the contour of skull, of sinew, thinking about peeling the meat from him when the snow returns. despite that, her touch is gentle.]
Is that what you want? To let it go? To replace it with – someone else? [she means nat, means their wintry entanglement, two starved bodies always so close, bundling up and going out into the snow over and over again to provide for them, returning empty handed again and again. spring had come, warmth and growing things and food and sunlight, and the two of them had frozen instead. something between them had died when javi had.
and now they’re here. and shauna cradles travis’s face with the softness she’d only shown his brother and her baby and jackie.] Tell me what you want.
no subject
shauna tips her face upwards, eyes glassy, face solemn, then reaches up her free hand, the hand that holds the knife, the hand that splits flesh from bone, the hand that feeds her family in the wilderness, her family that looks at her like a feral animal, like an approaching storm, like a vengeful god. her family that hates her. she touches his cheek, thumb finding the jut of bone, thinking about the contour of skull, of sinew, thinking about peeling the meat from him when the snow returns. despite that, her touch is gentle.]
Is that what you want? To let it go? To replace it with – someone else? [she means nat, means their wintry entanglement, two starved bodies always so close, bundling up and going out into the snow over and over again to provide for them, returning empty handed again and again. spring had come, warmth and growing things and food and sunlight, and the two of them had frozen instead. something between them had died when javi had.
and now they’re here. and shauna cradles travis’s face with the softness she’d only shown his brother and her baby and jackie.] Tell me what you want.